momtrolfreak

Momtrolfreak’s Unauthorized Guide to Taking Your Preschooler to DisneyWorld Without a Breakdown or the Use Of Psychotropic Drugs

 

(this one's gonna be long, kids; grab a snack. For those of you who are thrown off by something on this site that may actually prove to be of use to someone, I can only offer that I will not do it very often)

GENERAL DOs and DON’Ts

1. DO take inventory of all your luggage before leaving your house, so that your LARGEST RED IMPOSSIBLE TO MISS suitcase is not left behind, so that you do not get all the way to the airport and then have to turn around and go home to get said suitcase, thus tripling your cab fare to $100 total.

2. DO borrow a booster seat from your friend for the cab ride. DO NOT, however, expect to be able to use it on the plane. Carseats are approved by the FAA, but boosters are not.The FAA hates people over the age of 2. Fuck you, preschooler, says the FAA. I hope you choke on a peanut while craning your neck to see out.

3. DO get a cabbie who drives fast enough to get you back to the airport in time.Ours was a Palestinian Steve McQueen, seriously, the guy should be a stunt driver in da movies.

4. DO marry someone who is smart enough to bring, on the second trip, a garbage bag and some wet wipes for the Inevitable Preschooler Puking Incident that will, occur from too much time spent in a herky-jerky cab. (Thank you Aquaman)

5. DO fly Delta so that if you do happen to arrive only 27 minutes before takeoff, they are nice enough to let you check your luggage and get on the plane.  Also, DO exploit the fact that YOUR THREE YEAR OLD WILL MISS HIS FIRST TRIP TO DISNEYWORLD in order to beg your way ahead in line and into the military and airline employee security line.

6. DO NOT get your hopes up that, when your connecting flight is canceled, the now-three-hour layover will mean that you will get Chick-Fil-A in the Atlanta airport, because of course you idiot you are there on SUNDAY.

7. DO exploit OH NO THIS IS MY PRESCHOOLER’S FIRST TRIP TO DISNEY to beg your way higher up on the standby list for the replacement flight.

8. DO NOT freak out that your spouse always decides to spend his time at airports loudly brainstorming ways to improve current TSA procedures, loudly employing the terms “BOMB” and “TERRORIST” within earshot of numerous TSA employees.

9. DO bring Afrin nose spray, antibiotics, Mucinex D, neti pot, Kleenexes, and SHEER WILL to counter waning sinus infection before flight, so that your head does not explode during takeoff (TSA frowns upon exploding sinuses these days almost as much as exploding underwear).  If your sister can have a full bowel resection and still make this trip, you will not I REPEAT WILL NOT be deterred by a sinus infection.

10. DO NOT expect to go on the Log Flume when it is 30 degrees in Florida. Doing so may result in the Log Flu. I hear it’s nasty.You shit splinters.

11. DO pack your coat. DO NOT think, “Oh, I’m a Chicagoan, I won’t need a hat/gloves, because I am hard core about the coldness.” DO realize that in Chicago, 30 degrees feels warm only by comparison, and because it is not, as in Florida, a DAMP cold. Also, in Chicago, you are rarely on a rollercoaster generating your own wind chill.

12. DO NOT think too hard about the fact that Mickey Mouse and Michael Jackson look and act and sound an awful lot alike (white face, odd nose, strangely asexual, white gloves...eh? eh?)

13. DO NOT be disturbed when your mother says, “Ohhh, I love Peter Pan’s Flight! I did it on Darvoset once!” Even though your mother doesn't even drink because half a glass of champagne on New Year's Even has been known to make her melt onto the passenger door of the car, laughing and crying at the same time. DO worry that this is what will happen on Peter Pan's Flight.

14. DO use the complimentary “Mickey’s Magical Express” service that lets you check your bags at your home airport and not see them again until your hotel room.

15. DO NOT assume that they will end up in your hotel room any time soon. They disappear for about 6 hours after landing. It’s alllll part of the magic, folks. Still, better than lugging them around.

16. DO NOT rent the strollers in the park. If you think you will need a stroller, bring your own cheapie fold-up one. The strollers in the park are $15 a day to rent and they are SUPER uncomfortable. My kid could not sit in the thing, and he’s 3. It was hard plastic (all the better to hose off, I guess) and the opposite of ergonomically designed. He ended up actually upside down trying to curl up for a nap. Either bring your own stroller or be sure that someone in your party is ok with carrying the 3 year old around on their shoulders a LOT.

 

17. DO bring an iPod to wear when you ride “It’s A Small World” for the second through tenth times. This way, you do not amuse yourself by changing the lyrics:

You can use a gun, you can use some pills,

You can use a knife, just as long as it kills,

Why did I come along?

I hate this fucking song,

It’s a small world, kill me now.

There is no line for It’s A Small World, so you ride it a lot while you are waiting for your FastPass entry time on the more popular rides.  So, you know, if you don’t want your ears to start bleeding, I recommend either an iPod, or, like, Meth.

18. DO familiarize yourself with the FastPass process. It saves you a lot of heartache, as preschoolers are not that great at standing in lines.

19. DO get there when the park opens in the morning, at least for Magic Kingdom. They do a whole show, the train arrives with Mickey and pals aboard, they sing, they dance, they throw pixie dust, and then they open the gates with fanfare. It’s very special and the kids luh-HUV it.

20. DO get there early and then head straight to the BACK of the park you are doing that day. For Animal Kingdom, head straight for the safari ride. For Magic Kingdom with a preschooler, head to Pirates of the Caribbean, Thunder Mountain Railroad, or Peter Pan’s Flight. For Epcot, do Soarin' or the TestTrack. Ride one, get a FastPass for another. Work your way toward the exit. Crowds will be much easier to handle this way.

21. DO, at least one day, eat lunch at Gepetto’s Restaurant, next to the It’s A Small World ride. Along one wall there are tables that have windows that look down into the beginning of the ride, and it’s very cool for the kids to wave down at the people on the boats while you’re eating.

22. DO prepare your kid for rides that may scare him/her. For instance, with my family’s love of Halloween and the like, my sister Margot had reserved a ride with Frog on the Haunted Mansion ride. We took him on first, giving him some coping skills, telling him if something jumped out at him he could “RAWR” back at it with his dinosaur claws up. He loved this and spent the whole ride rawring. As soon as we came out, he went in with his aunt and uncle, who would not have been able to help much if he had flipped out from fear. Apparently they got stuck in the part of the ride where a spook pops out of a barrel, so it popped out repeatedly in front of them, and Frog spent ten minutes going, “RAWR! (pause) RAWR! (pause) RAWR!” Good times.

23. DO NOT be alarmed when you hear “cast members” (all employees are referred to this way) welcome a new cast member and tell others “he’s with the mouse now.” Yes, it’s a cult. Just know that going in and it won’t bother you.You will be much happier if you just get it over with and drink the Kool-Aid on Day One.

24. DO stay on property if you can. We stayed at the Wilderness Lodge, in a 2BR villa (note: villas do not offer late checkout, you must be out by 11am, so if you want a late checkout to facilitate naptime, get a regular room). The lobby of the Wilderness Lodge is awesome. Oh, and it’s lovely when everything is decorated for Christmas. If you’re not Christian, go after they take down the holiday decorations and stop playing holiday music (January 10^th).Wilderness Lodge is cool because it looks like it's constructed entirely out of Lincoln Logs.

25. DO pick at least one day to do WHATEVER your kid wants to do. We did this our second day. It really, really makes them happy, and gives them a sense of control that somehow helps you with the rest of the week when you drag them all over the place trying to make everyone happy. While the rest of our group did Epcot countries on Day 2, we knew Frog would not be interested in the cultural immersion portion of that (he doesn’t even get what a country IS), so we let him pick the day’s itinerary. We did Small World seriously like 5 times in a row, Peter Pan’s flight 3 times, Dumbo, then Tomorrow land to do racecars, rockets, Buzz Lightyear, and the tour train, then we did a park tour on the old-timey railroad, then played in the playground in ToonTown.  We had snacks and potty breaks when HE wanted to. It was pretty much the best damn day of his entire life. The next day we went back to setting the itinerary, but he didn’t complain because he’d gotten his fill of calling the shots the day before.

FOOD:

Overall, the kids’ food sucks, which was a big surprise to me. I mean, it’s about kids, right? But all parks serve the same stuff for kids: microwave (weirdly coagulant) mac n cheese, cheese pizza, hot dog, or a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The first day we ordered the peanut butter and jelly. It was a Smuckers pre-made one individually wrapped, with individually wrapped baby carrots pack, an individually wrapped pack of grapes, and a milk carton. There was nothing fresh.  Good that there were sides that weren’t fries, so kudos for that, but wow. If your kid will eat grown-up food, you may want to occasionally go that route and just have him/her share off of your plate. Come to think of it, most of the adult food is not much better: meatball sandwich, fish planks, chicken nuggets, pizza, etc. If you have a fridge in your room, I recommend getting some groceries. Save your money for eating out at night. There is no restriction on bringing sandwiches or whatever into the park. Oh and there are water fountains everywhere, so you can bring a water bottle to refill. The only problem with that plan—which I followed on Day 1 but then abandoned—was that the water in your room and in the parks tastes like Florida water. As in, slightly fishy or sandy or something. It’s just...off, somehow. So we ended up buying a case of bottled water and keeping it in the fridge, and each morning I’d tote one in my purse into the park.

KNICKKNACKS:

I highly recommend telling your kid up front what the plan is for gift shop buying. I saw a lot of little kids begging for purchases. Mine was all about the rides, thank God and was super bored the one time we went in a shop, BUT we also told him at the beginning that we would buy him three things. One toy at the beginning that he could buy with his own money, one balloon, and one thing at the end.  He had $12 of his own money saved up (presents from grandparents, chore money, etc). He bought a small die cast monorail that he took EVERYWHERE and put on anything straight as a monorail track. Great purchase.

The balloon we got on the way OUT of the park on the 2^nd day (for what it’s worth, you can let the air out to pack it, and then have it reinflated at your grocery store for like $1. Which is good because the balloons are TEN BUCKS.).

The last gift was a stuffed Mickey Mouse that his grandmother got him. This does not include, however, the AUTOGRAPH BOOK that you can buy anywhere in the park. Have this handy with a pen, as the characters show up unexpectedly. If you get there at opening, you can get a bunch of autographs before there’s much of a line. Frog warmed up to the idea of autographs on Day 3 and became something of a stalkerazzi at that point. We were begging him to go on a ride but he was determined to get Pluto, Daisy Duck, and then “Chimp and Dale” as he calls them, all in a row. By the way, only try to get autographs when the characters are set up for such. If they are walking around or dancing at a street party, they strangely do not have on the right "hands" for holding a pen. I plan to use this at work: Sorry, I don't have on my policy-writing hands today, oh well.  (Another bonus to getting there early is that you can ride the horse-drawn trolley that goes up and down main street). Oh, and he also got an owl from his great-aunt (it was her Christmas present to him), and then his grandmother bought him a tiny mouse-ears hat to go on the owl. So, so cute, the tiny mouse-ears hat. 

NAPS:

We did naps all but one day. I took the nap, too—I needed it. Oh and, we don’t co-sleep at home but I have to say, I had a really nice time co-sleeping with my kid on vacation. He is sooo warm and cuddly. The day we skipped the nap did not go well starting around 6pm, and we had to bail on our dinner reservations that night (the rest of the family went, we had a party of ten). He didn’t flip out, we just could see he was not going to hold it together for an 8pm dinner reservation.  Motivate your child to take naps by saying he can stay up to watch the FIREWORKS only if a nap occurs. You have to do the fireworks at least once. The castle is all lit up and it’s soooo pretty. Frog was on my hip watching the fireworks and whispered in my ear, “Oh, Mommy, they turn into starrrs.” Totally worth the price of admission.

DINNER OUT:

There are some cool restaurants to try out. Make your reservations the second you arrive in your hotel room the first night, things fill up fast.  I recommend the Japanese Restaurant at Epcot’s Japan (they cook in front of you at the table), the Kona Café at the Polynesian Resort, the Whispering Canyon restaurant at the Wilderness Lodge (only for lunch or dinner, though—breakfast there is not good at all. It’s a themed restaurant with obnoxious waiters who tease you, enormous drinks, all-you-can-eat milkshakes (yes really), and occasional stick-pony races around the restaurant for the kiddies. Oh, and be sure to ask for ketchup).  Also, there is a restaurant at Hollywood Studios where you sit IN a car and watch old b movies like you’re in a drive-in. I forget the name. Very cool though, reminds me of Pulp Fiction’s Jack Rabbit Slims. DO NOT eat at the NBC Commissary at Hollywood Studios. We ended up somehow with no other choice, stood in a massive line for an HOUR and got mediocre, lukewarm crap. Inexplicably, they “theme” their meals. There are only eight things on the menu:

“LOST” fried fish (ok, this makes sense, an island, gotcha)

“UGLY BETTY” Cheeseburger (um…eat it and you get fat and zitty?)

“GREY’S ANATOMY” Chicken Curry (um…I’m getting confused now…)

“EXTREME MAKEOVER HOME EDITION” Asian Salad (W.T.F., are you SERIOUS?)

There are two desserts,

“Desperate Housewives Chocolate Mousse” and “All My Children Strawberry Shortcake.”

 

I am at a loss here, people.

Just…take my advice, and make reservations for dinner. This will also keep you from enduring, after an hour in line, the person in front of you asking to SEE THE RECIPES for everything on the menu because someone in her party has egg and milk allergies. I’m sorry, but you had an hour of line-standing to ask that question. He manager went and got “THE BOOK” and brought it up and they spent seriously I am not kidding 20 minutes going over the recipes and devising work-arounds. If you have any allergies, MAKE RESERVATIONS FOR DINNER. The chefs will COME OUT TO YOUR TABLE and make you something SPECIAL. Do not go to a place called a COMMISSARY and hold up the line asking how GREY’S ANATOMY CHICKEN CURRY CAN BE MADE EGG FREE. DO NOT ORDER THE EXTREME MAKEOVER CHICKEN SALAD WITHOUT THE SESAME SEEDS, THE DRESSING, or the SOY. “ ASIAN SALAD, HOLD THE ASIAN” does not make sense.

WHAT TO DO AT EACH PARK WITH A THREE YEAR OLD:

I did a lot of research into what was and was not appropriate for our target age group. There are tons of things to do at each park, but I am listing below only the things you’ll want to do if you have a three or four year old in tow.

NOTE: AT all parks, there are an awful lot of 3-D rides and movies. If your kid isn’t into 3D, gets motion sick, or won’t wear the glasses, make sure to pay attention to those. We fall into the category above, so we did not do anything 3D.

HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS

Do not go to Hollywood Studios with a preschooler. It is a waste of your time. Do not go there. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Close cover before striking. Not available in all states. We dragged him there one evening (see Commissary fiasco above) and felt horrible as we wandered around with nothing for him to do. Finally we took him on the Star Wars ride, a cool flight simulator, but it was pretty herky-jerky and we were lucky we got out of there with a reprise of the Inevitable Puking Incident from our cab ride earlier in the week.

MAGIC KINGDOM (divided into a couple of areas):

RAILROAD  stops at the front gate, Frontierland, and ToonTown. A full circle of the park takes 20 minutes. It’s a great way to get around quickly when your feet hurt, but if your kid is like mine, it’s just as thrilling as any of the “real” rides.

HORSE-DRAWN TROLLEY – super cool to ride this. Slow but cool, one-way trip. Great views of the castle. You hop on right at the main entrance, in the square.

Adventureland: Swiss Family Treehouse, Jungle Cruise, Pirates of the Caribbean (now refurbished with animatronic Johnny Depps, nom nom). A small waterfall drop in the dark could scare some littles. Frontierland: Big Thunder Mountain Railroad: If your kid is fearless and over 40 inches. Test him out first on the Barnstormer kiddie coaster in ToonTown to gauge his fear factor.  Mine did this the last day and clenched his teeth through the whole thing and said he didn’t like it, but 30 minutes later he cited it as his favorite ride. So. Also, Tom Sawyer Island is AWESOME. You take a raft over and then kids can just explore. There’s a fort with guns where you can get all conflicted about your kid pretending to be a sniper, until he tells YOU to try it and you really find that you very much enjoy pretending to shoot the obnoxious people standing in line for Thunder Mountain Railroad. Avoid the Country Bear Jamboree, it is somehow both boring and creepy at the same time. It’s almost exactly like going to Chuck E Cheese. If that isn’t enough to scare you off, then nothing will.

Liberty Square: The Hall of Presidents now has President Barack Obama standing among George Washington, John F Kennedy, Thomas Jefferson, etc. That is so super awesome I just don’t even know what to say. Barack side by side with Thomas Jefferson, who owned slaves…gulp. Yay America, you’ve come a long way, baby. Also here is Haunted Mansion (see above for coping techniques).

Fantasyland: It’s a Small World, natch. Also Peter Pan’s Flight, Dumbo ride, Cinderella’s Golden Carousel, Pooh’s Playful Spot (I know, sounds dirty, right? But it’s just a great play area with a treehouse that for some reason has a sprinkler system. MY house doesn’t have a sprinkler system). AVOID: The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (sounds innocuous, but it’s the converted Mr Toad’s Wild Ride and apparently it’s terrifying).

ToonTown Fair: A great place to meet characters and get autographs. You can tour Minnie’s house and Mickey’s house (they do not live together. I thought they were married? Huh).  Ride the Barnstormer (kiddie coaster) and there’s a water play area called Donald’s Boat (was not turned on, see aforementioned 30 degree weather).

Tomorrowland: SPEEDWAY, super popular, make it there early in the morning. Space Mountain has height restrictions, 44 inches, so we didn’t do that, but I remember it being very, very cool, if you have an older child. Tomorrowland Transit Authority is a really child ride that take you on a tour, very boring but not for a 3 year old, he loved it. Buzz Lightyear’s Space Ranger spin (do not let your child control the movement of your vehicle, you will have an Inevitable Puking Incident of your own. Have him stick to shooting the laser gun at the bad guys). Astro Orbiter is a rocket-go-round, with AWESOME views.

EPCOT:

Spaceship Earth is the ride inside the big ball. It’s chill and has a great planetarium thing at the end. When you get off, there’s a driving video game. DO NOT DO Mission Space. You might want to check out Test Track, but it never had wait times under 150 minutes when we were there so we never got to it. Ellen’s Energy Adventure is supposed to be funny but it’s 45 minutes so we skipped it, as we are amusement park commitment-phobes. The Seas with Nemo & Friends is a nice relaxing ride with scenes from Finding Nemo.  At The Land (the place with the awesome cafeteria with organic food and hydroponically grown produce), you MUST ride Soarin’, and the very chill “Living with the Land.” If you’re with a preschooler you can avoid the “World Showcase” entirely.  Although, if you do venture over there, check out right smack dab halfway around the lake (where the ferry landing is) there is a model train set up with a Swiss town, very cute. 

QUICK ANECDOTE: In “Paris,” we walked past a crepe stand, and overheard the “Cast member” saying “No no, I am sorry, sir, we ‘ave only ze crepes.” To which the tourist replied, “LOOK, I don’t want a crepp. I want cotton candy. You know, fluffy pink stuff? COTTONNNN CANNNDYYYY.” More apologies from cast member.  Kind of crazy that we Americans are assholes even in FAKE FRANCE.  “America,” in this instance, was literally 30 feet away, so walk your fat ass over there and get your cotton candy there.

ANIMAL KINGDOM:

There are two shows here that are GREAT, like, I WOULD PAY FOR THEM GREAT): Festival of the Lion King, and Finding Nemo—The Musical. Really amazing production values; I was shocked. Great talent.

 

Preschoolers will like Kilimanjaro Safari, Forest Exploration Trail, The Boneyard in DinoLand, Fossil Fun Games, TriceraTop Spin. There’s a DINOSAUR ride that’s a bit risky scary-wise, with a height requirement that Frog was a tad too short for so I can’t comment but my mom says there’s a T-Rex that makes even adults almost crap their pants. So maybe not.  

FINAL TIPS:

• If you are alone with your kid (no extended family), they will let the whole family stay in line for a ride, one parent rides while the other stays with the kid(s), and then gets off and switches out with other parent (i.e. without going to the back of the line).
• If you stay on property at any Disney resort, there are “Extra Magic Hours” for the parks that change each day. Some days Magic Kingdom opens an hour early. Another day Animal Kingdom stays open an extra THREE HOURS for guests (though be aware that the safari does not happen after sunset).
• If you have a GIRL, you may want to book a character breakfast or lunch (Cinderella’s Table, etc). The girls seemed to be very into this. Also, if your daughter owns a princess dress (or two) already, BRING IT so she can wear it to the park. Otherwise she will see ALL THE OTHER GIRLS wearing THEIR princess dresses and she will feel left out and want you to buy her a dress THERE, which is like $70. AVOID AT ALL COSTS. Also, there’s this thing where you can go to a “princess salon” where they slick your daughter’s hair back into a super tight bun, sprinkle pixie glitter all over her head, put MAKEUP on her, and attach a tiara with fake sparkly hair. This results in your child looking like a common street prostitute. AVOID. Also, do not let your child wear her high heeled glass slippers to the park. Duh, you think, but I saw three girls hobbling along in pain like bound-footed geishas. AVOID AVOID AVOID.
• You can get your kid a button that says “First Time!” and she’ll get more attention from cast members. If it’s a birthday, you can get a button that says that, and then seriously everyone she passes will say “HAPPY BIRTHDAY SALLY!!” and she will feel like a celebrity. It’s a bit creepy, actually, after awhile, for everyone to know your kid’s name, but you know, up to you.

I have to admit, I’ve always sort of rolled my eyes at the idea of Disney, choosing to be all cool and “above it”--but I have to say, this was probably the best week of my kid’s entire life. It’s really, really nice, from his perspective, to be in a place where everyone greets HIM instead of his parents, you know? No one frowns when you walk into a restaurant with a kid. Every dinner feels like a special occasion. It’s…nice. It’s a really, really nice vacation from reality. As we walked out of the Magic Kingdom that last day, we said “Goodbye, Castle!” and “Goodbye, Main Street!” and my kid got a little teary-eyed and then I seriously got choked up. He looked at me and said, “Mommy, I love it here. When we have to go on an airplane back home I will be so sad to go to my city.”

I felt the same way. The real world—especially one that is gray and only 3 degrees today—kinda blows when you have literally been spending your days in Fantasyland.

Frog bidding farewell to the castle, with blanket and Kangaroo in hand for comfort.

My Husband: Putting the "C0ck" in "Hancock Building"

I have this compulsion when my husband and son are heading out of the house for the day to say, "Be safe!" Can't help it. I have a very active imagination. I can bring myself to tears sometimes just looking at my son and thinking how great he is and how lucky I am to have him in my life and then wondering if something horrible will happen to take him away from me. There was a tragedy several years ago  involving my young nephew (a fatal accident when he was the age my son is now), so I thought that was why I worried so much, but as I talk to other mothers, I hear more and more that it's universal. We worry. It's what we do. Some of us worry about our children getting hurt. Others worry about the psychological damage we are inflicting on them (from divorce, from NOT getting divorced, from being maniacal about cleanliness, for being impatient with them).

I can be all free-range for awhile, but if I'm stressed or tired the overprotective helicopter parent in me comes out like gangbusters. I told my own mom about this, and she said that when I was little she always worried I would not live past  the age of seven because she could not imagine me older than that. Oddly, this made me feel better. I'm sure that's indicative of how screwed up I am.

It's human nature to worry, i guess, at least for mothers. We invest so much of our being in these little people. It's excruciating to think of something happening.

Incidentally, because I know my weaknesses, I do not ever let myself watch Law & Order or CSI or any of those other dead-body shows. I made the mistake of watching Angelina Jolie's The Changeling and worried for weeks about kidnapping. It also helps me not to watch network news (I get my news from NPR, which rarely covers stuff like child abductions). No 60 Minutes and no 20/20, either: those shows are porn for worriers. I have to stay away. BACK AWAY FROM THE WORRY PORN.

So yesterday, as my husband and son were headed out the door to go to the top of the HANCOCK BUILDING, sweet Jesus, my usual "be safe!" morphed into "PLEASE BE SAFE" with a sidecar of two texts and a chaser of one phonecall on their way there, reminding my husband of things that could go wrong at the top of the Hancock Building with a three year old. You know, just in case he was planning on letting him rappel down the west face of the damn thing.

So about an hour later, my husband sends me a picture from his cellphone, with the title

HI MOMMY WE ARE BEING CAREFUL ON THE 93RD FLOOR:

Oh, HAAAA ha ha fucking ha. Soooo funny.

(This is, by the way, a MURAL of buildings, with a faux scaffold. Had this been an ACTUAL emergency, the tones you hear would have been followed by a rage blackout and a divorce.)

You know how the therapy for a fear of flying is working your way up to taking a *real* flight? The theory is, I suppose, that you just immerse yourself in the fear and as a result, you get over it.

If you are a worrier, then, the best cure is to marry my husband.

You receive total full-on FEAR IMMERSION and eventually you chill out.

In theory.

I'm waiting.

Writer's Block: An Identity Crisis in One Act

Whenever we read a book to Frog we always include reading aloud the cover/title and the name of the author.  People think it's weird not to just skip to the good stuff, but it's always been important to me for him to know that these wonderful collections of paper and pictures and fantastical ideas don't just magically appear out of nowhere, that they are the product of someone's imagination. Even at three and a half he knows who his favorite authors are and says their names with me ("Shel Silverstein" sounds really cute with his slight lisp, by the way, as do Maurice Sendak and Sandra Boynton and Richard Scarry--man, authors' names have a lot of S's).

[Sidenote: We were at our local bookstore (the fabulous, independently owned Unabridged) and he walked right up to the counter and asked them if they had "Polar Express" and when they gave him that one, he said "do you have more Shel Silverstein books?" The school had just done a little play with selections from Where the Sidewalk Ends and he became a huuuuuge fan. (His favorite poem is "Someone Ate the Baby." Good thing we stopped at one kid.)]

A few weeks ago we were about to read one of his Busytown books when he said "Richard Scarry is an author, just like you, Mommy!" I was a bit taken aback. Turns out my husband, completely bypassing what my "real" job is, has been telling our son that what Mommy does is write books. Granted, telling a three year old that I work for a medical not-for-profit wouldn't mean anything to him, so it's easier just to say "she writes books." Aquaman told him that when he's bigger he can read a book written by Mommy because they are not kid books (the plural here--"books"-- cracks my shit UP. Not only have I not written "books" I have also yet to have written "book").  I probably won't FINISH my novel until Frog's a grown up (seeing as how I wrote five chapters in 2005 and then found out I was pregnant and, um, yeah. Five chapters.), so that's fine.

But I got...this sounds silly, but I got a teensy bit upset that my husband told him I'm a writer.  

I've won writing awards; I've been published academically and presented papers academically; I've gotten honors and nominations for this blog; I have had essays published in magazines; I've reviewed and been a guest writer on other websites...but I don't call myself a writer. I only do it as a hobby, see. I only spend maybe 15% of my leisure time (of which I have none) doing anything related to writing. So, 15% of 0% is not a lot of time, and certainly not enough to claim a title. 

It just sounds so unbelievably pretentious: "I'm a writer." I'd be a poseur, bragging about being a poet or something at a cocktail party and then finding out I was talking to Maya Angelou or something. Not that I wouldn't recognize Maya Angelou. You know what I'm saying.

"I'm a writer."

I just can't imagine this being my response to "So what do you do?" Not yet. For now, my day job persona is the stock answer. I imagine it will be for a long time. it's comfortable, I'm good at it, and I can talk about it at length, which is something I can't do about writing.

I used to sometimes answer "I'm an actress" back when that was true, and it always got annoying: "OOOH! What have you BEEN in?" they'd ask, and I've have to stand there and list my resume and watch their eyes for glimmers of recognition and approval. I wouldn't get any, because most of the places I worked, while quite established and respected and paying gigs, even, weren't necessarily "known" to those who weren't in the business or at least avid theatregoers. If your average Joe asks where you've appeared and you don't say "Steppenwolf" or "Broadway" or "CSI: MIami" or some such shit in the first two breaths, you're not gonna measure up. So I'd mention the Goodman (true, but only as an understudy), and if they didn't even know what THAT was (God help them), I'd mention a couple of my commercials and a recurring role I had on Prison Break on FOX and they'd get all excited. Which made me really sad about the state of art in America today, that Prison break was more legit to your average person than, say, playing Maggie in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, one of the classics of American literature. Tennessee who? they would sometimes ask. Yikes. 

So I really don't want to go through that, now, from the writing side of things. Until I say "I'm a writer" and then they say "where have you been published?" and I can say something super fantabulous like "oh didn't you read my piece in the New Yorker last week?" then I'm just not gonna put myself out there. (and the closest I have come to that are my really awesome entries for the caption contest, but even those don't win, although once my caption DID win but they attributed it to someone else because me and this guy sent in the same thing, so that was both gratifying and annoying but still, here I am not published in the New Yorker).

n the meantime I'll just stand over here, in the shadows, clutching my pen drive with my five chapters and my crinkled copies of my published essays and maybe that tiny blurb they published of mine that time in Wondertime and paid me real money for and my encouraging-but-nonetheless-rejecting letters from big important places. I'll just stand over here, next to my refrigerator, with those items, and meditate on being a 'real' writer like Richard Scarry and Shel Silverstein.

I'll meditate on living up to my child's idealized version of who I am,

imparted to him by my husband's idealized version of what I can be. 

I started this post to go on the blog; I started the blog to get back to writing; I started writing because I had something to say; I swallowed the spider to catch the fly; I don't know why I swallowed the fly; I think I'll die.

I've got to read fewer children's books. 

Growing Up So Fast It's Scaaaaaary

I may have mentioned before how Halloween is a High Holiday in my house. I come from a long line of women who for whatever reason love Halloween more than any other holiday. Christmas is fine, we enjoy the giving and the togetherness, but nothing gets us excited like a bunch of bats and some candy apples. It's entirely possible that the reason I became a professional actress was my love for playing dress-up. My sister Margot really takes this to extremes: you know how people volunteer at holiday-time? Every Halloween, she volunteers... AT A HAUNTED HOUSE. Where other people do Christmas in July, she does Halloween in April. When she was getting her degree in sociology, her thesis was on the phenomenon of slutty Halloween costumes for young women, how the whole point of the holiday was to be a "Naughty nurse" or an S&M version of Rainbow Brite (therapy, anyone?). She doesn't conform to such stereotypes herself, of course: her costumes generally forgo sexiness and flattering cuts in favor of cleverness. She also usually makes her boyfriend coordinate with her. This year, she wasn't allowed to volunteer at the haunted house as usual because her doctor said that, post-surgery, her immune system wasn't strong enough to allow her to safely interact with that many members of the public who may or may not have H1N1 or god knows what else.

So, as she couldn't go to the haunted house, she decide she'd just BE a haunted house. She got a big ol' box and cut a ton of tiny windows and painted it black and lit it from within to make the windows glow and walked around inside it, with--and this is the best part--ghost sock puppets on her hands, coming out of the haunted windows. This, my friends, is what I call commitment.The large box also provided her with the necessary germ-free bubble that allowed her to venture out to a party. Is clevah, no?

So it goes without saying that the sister of someone so dedicated cannot just half-ass this holiday. You can't be a cafeteria catholic if your sister is a nun. Well, I guess you can, but you'd have a disconnect, and you'd have a hard time figuring out what to get your brother-in-law for Christmas (I mean, God? The ultimate Guy Who Has Everything). So even if I wanted to, I cannot phone it in. And I wouldn't want to even if I could. I, too, love Halloween. LOVE. I love the candy buying and answering the doorbell and commenting on the kiddies' costumes, I love picking out a pumpkin and carving it up and almost gagging at the seeds being so gross, and I love mulling for months over what we're going to dress as, and wandering around Lincoln Park (because the big brownstones have the coolest decorations and the best candy, and because trick or treating in a high rise is totally lame), even if it means bundling up and/or just suffering with wind-chapped cheeks and purple fingers clutching that treat bag, because by God, Halloween ROCKS.

One of the BEST things about having a child--and I acknowledged this as a benefit early on, about five minutes after I found out I was pregnant--is that I totally have an excuse to dress up now. Not that I didn't still dress up before, but I was never able, pre-child, to get Aquaman to dress up WITH me, to do any semblance of a "theme" together. Now I can. Bwa hahahaha.

Likewise, one of the best things about Frog going to a Jewish preschool (besides delicious hamentaschen and challah) was that they did Purim, so we got NOT ONE BUT TWO HALLOWEENS!!!

Aquaman tries to get me to wait until it is ACTUALLY OCTOBER before I start shopping for costume ideas. Silly man. He's right to try, because clearly, when I start in August, it means that I buy something in August. And then possibly change my mind a few times, so that every Halloween, we've ended up with two or three different costumes for Frog. You know, for different purposes. The kid has more costume changes than Lady Gaga. It's a little ridiculous, I'll admit. I have a problem. There, I said it. But that's not going to keep me out of Party City and off the Costumes Express website next September.

See, he's just so damn cute. His first Halloween, we went first with a little comfy lion costume. He was only 6 months old or so and still really chubby. I had thought, ok cool, he'll be a lion and then I can be Dorothy and I'll make Aquaman be the scarecrow, DONE. But then I trolled around for Dorothy costumes and "sexy dorothy" was not gonna be appropriate for, well anything, and the only other option was "Plus Size Dorothy" and that was the frumpiest piece of shit I've ever seen in my life. I seriously think it was made out a vinyl picnic tablecloth. Either that of grocery bags from Aldi.

Anyway, we got his picture made in the lion costume (I don't usually post photos of my kid's face here but he looks nothing now like he did as a baby, becasue he was a pretty fat baby, so woo-ha, caution to the wind):

 

And that was really cute but then I had nothing to coordinate with it. And I needed to coordinate because a) there was a neighborhood fair and parade to go to and b) there was my office Halloween party to go to and c) it's a sickness. So I sold the lion costume on craigslist and searched for something else. Enter the pirate:

 

Arrrrrr. But that smile lasted about 2 seconds before we discovered the hard way it was too itchy and stiff.  So, we went to Old Navy and tried on a nice, comfy, soft chicken costume: 

Oh the humanity. Even at this tender age (get it? tender? chicken tenders? eh? eh?) Frog had an overdeveloped sense of injustice. I'm keeping this photo for use in his therapy sessions later on.
It's just as well, as I had no idea what I was planning to wear in order to coordinate with a chicken costume.

So, we finally ended up with a bat costume.

To coordinate with the bat, I was a vampire. Easy peasy since I'm really white and have straight dark hair so pretty much, all I had to do to be a vampire was wear black and put on a choker and some red lipstick. Et voila! I do not have a photo of the two of us in theme, this is yet another victim of the fact that my husband, though an art teacher, takes craptacular photos, so I do all the photo-taking and therefore am never recorded in pictures. Huh, kinda like a vampire.

The next year, when he was just under 2, I scoured the thrift stores for the raw materials to fashion a tiny adorable Luke Skywalker costume. I was rather proud of this one. I was Princess Leia to coordinate:

 

 

The next year, I lowered my standards because we actually closed on our sale and our purchase of the condo and moved on October 31. It was unavoidable. This is like if a normal Christian person was forced to move on Christmas Day, seriously, there was some gnashing of teeth up in here. Our wonderful new neighbor (also room parent of my son's daycare class, known to you as The She-Kramer or MashugaMom) picked Frog up from school that day and took him trick or treating with her son while we set up his bedroom, paid the movers, etc. He wore a lame-o doctor costume, though even then, it was a theme, because his friend was a firefighter, so it was an emergency services thing. And he looked adorable in his scrubs and white coat, though I have no photos. 

This year, he actually started having his own opinions, so I had a blast "shopping" with him online for ideas of what we should. Unfortunately he's effing THREE so his opinions changed on a daily basis. Finally I cut him off, no more mind-changing, so in mid-September (extraordinary willpower to hold out so long) we ordered our costumes online. He wanted Star Wars. I got him the Luke outfit (not from Tattooine like before but Luke as an X-Wing Fight Pilot in the orange jumpsuit), and I had to re-purchase the Leia costume, at his insistence (I'd sold the previous one on craigslist, dammit). Together, we succeeded in convincing Aquaman to be Darth Vader.

Only problem was, when the box arrived, Frog was insistent that he HIMSELF was going to be Darth Vader. Uh....crap. So I (BECAUSE I AM BRILLIANT!!!) came up with a test. If he could wear the Vader mask for five whole minutes, he could be Darth Vader. It's amazing I got a photo of this....

because it literally lasted about six seconds. I AM EVIL GENIUS.

Luke wins!

 

And Aquaman got to hide behind his Darth persona, though he did have a quite a bit of flair when the wind picked up:

 

We're storing the Darth and Leia rather than passing them along this year. There are too many other characters he might want to be, now that he knows what Star Wars actually is, and I am not buying the same costume again. "We could wear this same theme every year," Aquaman said hopefully.

Honey, please. Have we met?

So, I was really just planning to do a little retrospective here, a funny and lighthearted review of our Halloweens so far, but in digging out these old photos, something different happened. I got totally choked up. My little munchkin was so, so fat and smiley as a baby, in that lion costume, and now he's, look, i know he's only three but he seems SO OLD. Look how skinny the body is that's stickin gout from under that Darth Vader mask. Three and a half years has gone by in the blink of an eye. Aquaman said to me the other day, "five more blinks just like this and he'll be in college."

Uguh. 

He's already so mature sometimes, telling me "I KNOW that, Mommy!" when i try to tell him, um, anything, or getting upset with me and slamming the door of his bedroom (he did this so much one evening--I found out later, he hadn't napped at school, eureka!--that I actually went in there and calmly threatened that if he did it one more time Daddy was going to take the door off its hinges and he would not have any privacy. This actually worked, thank God.). He's such a teenager already, I feel like I have missed the baby part altogether. I totally get why people have another baby right about now; you want that age back. I really do. I have GOT to find a way to do less, to not stress about work so that I'm not doing it in the evenings when I should be enjoying family time, etc. Grad school being over with is a huge weight off, one less thing that takes me away from my kid. I have writen before about this: choosing "good mom" means beign a bad student and bad employee; choosing "good employee" means bad mom, etc. You are never succeeding at all of your roles at one time.

I find myself enjoying the times when my son is sick because not only do I get to stay home from work with him (Aquaman and I fight over who GETS to call in!) but my little boy becomes littler, more cuddly. Stays still for longer. Lets me cuddle him tighter. Stays still long enough for me to smell the top of his head.  I had to go across country for a business trip a couple of weeks ago, and the first night when I called home and my son got on the phone, the smallness of his little voice took my breath away. He sounded so tiny. My husband got back on the phone. "Oh my God, he sounds like such a baby!" I exclaimed.

"He IS a baby," my husband said. "We just don't realize it anymore."

I forget that he really IS still small, that time hasn't run out.  He may have gone from pudgy, smiley infant in a lion costume (and chicken costume, and pirate, and bat costume) to skinny, gangly boy who has his own opinion about what he'll wear, but his childhood isn't over yet.

I still have a chance to soak it up.

I just need to find a way to get more hours in the day, or slow time down a bit.

May the Force be with me.

Nutrition for Dummies

Me: (looking at grocery list) "Honey, what's this mean: 'organic hot sauce'?"

Aquaman: "You said we should start eating healthier." 

Me: "So you thought, like, putting ORGANIC hot sauce on your nachos would accomplish that?"

Aquaman: "Does it not?"

Me: "No." 

Aquaman: "Do they make organic ice cream?"

Me: "Maybe, but that's still not the point."

Aquaman: (pause) "....I'm out." 

***

Okay, look. I AM NOT JOKING when I say I do not know how to cook. I come from a long line of women who do not know how to cook. My mother, as domestic and perfectly wonderful as she is and was, from a maternal-love perspective, nurturer extraordinaire, knows how to make exactly two dishes, and one of them is a dessert. HER mother used to watch me when I was little sometimes and would feed me either Pringles, KitKats, or a grilled cheese sandwich, in which "grilled cheese sandwich" means a kraft American Cheese slice inside two pieces of Wonder Bread, microwaved--yes, that's right, MICROWAVED for ten seconds. I am not sure how my maternal bloodline survived the years before microwaves. My dad is a great cook, but he was never home. His dad was a chef and caterer and amazing man all around, but he died of a brain tumor some time ago and I can't ask him how to make any of the stuff he used to make: angel biscuits, orange blossoms, brunswick stew, brains and eggs (scratch that last one, I don't want to know how to make that). And even if I had recipes, which I do, sometimes, acquire, I also do not ENJOY cooking. What's a girl to do? Anyone else been in this situation but somehow learned how to make healthy eating work? I buy these fresh ingredients, see--portabellos, pomegranates, fresh peppers, etc--and then they just sit there and rot on my counter, as I glance guiltily at them out of the corner of my eye and dial New Peking or Joy's Noodles. Are there personal chefs who work for cheap? We both work full time, too, and cooking takes a long time, time that I could spend playing with my kid. I RESENT spending an hour putting a meal together while my kid plays by himself in his room, after I've just spent the whole goddamn day ALSO not playing with my kid. But then, on the other hand, I feel bad feeding him boxed mac 'n' cheese and fish sticks, too. HOW DO YOU PEOPLE DO THIS?!?!?!?!????? Seriously, I need an intervention. A game plan.

Bring it.

I Have No 'Good' Excuse Because I am Not a Real Writer

Hello, friends in my laptop. (Ooh! Laptop! She's on the go!!!) I know I've been neglecting the blog again but really I haven't. I've got all sorts of awesome stories stored up, an actual list of acftual stories to tell you, written down on actual paper (you know? that stuff we used to use to keep in touch with people? it's flat? white? eh...? eh..? Yeah. I barely remember it either). Soon I will tell you about Halloween (it will be a FULL COLOR PICTORIAL!!! in fact!), and the swine flu epidemic at my son's school, and going out for a girls' night to the theatahhhh, and etc. But right now, for the past two weeks, all that has been consuming me is MY JOB. And see, I don't write about my job, mostly because many of you would not find it interesting and also because I don't want to ever be fired for writing about my job.

So there you have it. I don't write about my job, and all I have been eating sleeping thinking for the past three weeks, basically, is my job--so tell me, fair reader, what would I write about? I'm now sitting in my hotel room in San Francisco, on a business trip, a little toasty from a few drinks at the mahhvelous ABSINTHE (Jamie from Top Chef is the head chef there, yum! You absolutely MUST try the beef cheeks, urmagah, and the bailey's cupquette for dessert). And it's midnight here which means 2a.m. at home. So I should be sleeping. But I'm not. You know why? Because a coworker friend who reads this blog asked me yesterday what the freaking deal was with me not writing for awhile. So I replied basically what I just told you: that I don't write about work so, you know, all work and not play makes momtrolfreak a no-post loser. So she said, "Well, you better write something soon, I mean, people may give up on you...I mean Jen Lancaster will go a few weeks without posting but she has a good excuse because she writes books and stuff." I'm not sure if she said 'good' excuse or 'real' excuse, I kinda blacked out in there somewhere. But so now, here you go, Jessica, this one's for you. I'm posting. IS THIS BETTER? And now I have to go work on my novel too so I don't feel like a total loser.

Looking forward to another anxiety dream tonight: you know, when you're a control freak and you go out of town for a week while your son's class is having a mini-breakout of the plague. your stunted ability to control unleashes itself in your dreams. After my first night here, I woke up in a cold sweat and had to call Aquaman to make him promise me that at the first sign of fever in Frog, he would call me and take him to Children's Memorial and not that crappy hospital HE always goes to when he almost hacks off a limb at work.

The second morning, I had to call him to tell him to make sure not to leave the room if Frog was eating the grapes we bought at Whole Foods right before I left (how ironic it was, in my dream. for Frog to have been taken down by a double-priced ORGANIC grape that was supposed to be good for him. Without the pesticides, though, it doesn't go down the throat as easily, I guess).

This morning? I had to call him to say, you know, just in CASE there HAPPENS to be a large, and by large I mean, of course, COFFEE-TABLE-SIZED spider in our house--an obese and hairy one, like if a tarantula and Rush Limbaugh had a baby--you know, don't let it eat our son. Or, for that matter. any imaginary infants we might have lying around the house.

Aquaman assures me each time that things are Under Control. I don't see how that can be, if I am not there, but he says he is "bringing his A game." He was a C student, so I find this maybe not so reassuring.

  

And You May Ask Yourself, Well: How Did I Get Here

I'm at the computer, my husband is working late, my preschooler is in his room building block castles while listening to Santana, and marriages are crashing down all around us. Of our closest friends, three of the couples that five years ago I would have said were among the most stable, the most loving, the most perfect matches, have ended. It’s hard to know where to go, what to say, who you’re allowed to talk to, what your role is. If you have a role at all.  

Divorce necessarily is about self-preservation and, if there are children, about keeping those children happy and sane and loved, so I’m not looking for sympathy here as the friend of someone getting divorced. My role is tiny-to-nonexistent. No one cares—no one should care—about the effect someone’s divorce might have on that person’s adult friends. But I can’t help feeling shell-shocked because...these relationships? These were Things I Knew For Sure. 

One couple we actually lived with for several months when we had sold our house and our new condo ended up being behind schedule. These people took us into their home, OFFERED out of the blue that we should move in with them, into their tiny three bedroom bungalow with two kids and one bathroom. We were living there when she found out she was pregnant with their third child, and I was one of the first to know. It was their family life, their children, their parenting that made us rethink our childless existence, that made us decide at 32 that maybe we did want children after all.

One couple we considered as legal guardians for our own child and only decided against asking them because we worried it would be too much of a burden, financial and otherwise. I remember watching them say goodbye with affection once as he was headed just to the grocery store and I thought, wow, we don’t kiss each other goodbye. What’s our deal?

I remember one wedding like it was yesterday: an intimate celebration on a set that my husband designed that actually rotated on a turntable. This little cottage turned in circles before us, surrounding the two lovers with twinkling fiberoptic “stars” and as much love as one could cram into a church basement-turned-theatre. Almost everyone there was an actor—including the officiant—and when a cell phone rang during the ceremony the officiant quipped, “If that’s God or my agent, tell him I’ll call him back.” They were the coolest kids in town, with the coolest apartment in an old warehouse building, where you had to wind your way, Escher-like, through a maze of stairways and hallways, past dozens of Not The Right Doors until you finally arrived at The Right Door, only recognizable as such because of the heap of parkas and boots piled outside and the laughter coming from within.  They held Flirting Parties and parties where men ended up dressing in old period costume pieces from the show that had just closed and making fun of their partners who had worn the clothing onstage.  Their parties were more like “happenings” in the sixties. You couldn’t risk missing one. He took my belly photos when I was pregnant with Frog and framed several 8x10's as a shower gift. I still have a black and white photo they gave me of the first time I met their daughter: my foot next to her tiny infant foot, a photo on which the new mom had written, “Big foot, Little Foot, foot foot foot.”  The infant girl is, what, ten now? Eleven maybe. Maybe only nine, but she looks older. Gorgeous like her mother, who directed us in our first show in Chicago, in tiny bit parts in a very cool theatrical experience that really MEANT something…because everything these two did, it meant something.

This sounds like a eulogy, and in a way it is. I am mourning the loss of this great marriage, of their life together and what it meant to those who came into contact with them. They meant so much to us. They still will.

Amazing what we can’t see coming.Would it change anything if we could?

I wonder if we would brace ourselves for impact.

To some extent, our current lives and our ideas of what the future holds are based on these marriages. Each time one dissolves, we grab hands, take a deep breath and duck under the wave, let it wash over us. We feel the pull of the current washing everything out from under us and out to sea.  We dig our feet into the sand until our toes cramp.

These are people I respect and love, all of them.  It physically pains me to see them hurting. My husband and I are having late-night talks these days where we intone meaningless, trite phrases like we never saw it coming and of all people and then intertwine fingers and murmur to each other, We are so lucky.  

This is our mantra now: We are so blessed. Not that we didn’t realize it before. Not that we haven’t been through our share of trauma and hard times and really hard times and hurt feelings. We have. And I don’t know why those times, for us, led to resolution and a strengthened relationship rather than to divorce.

I am under no delusions that it could not just as easily have gone the other way.

I know no secrets to a happy marriage. I cannot throw stones. I am not more committed, more forgiving, more understanding, more patient than other people. I tend to hold a grudge. I know what it is to feel as if I could never forgive, and I know what it is to finally feel the release of forgiveness come upon me unexpectedly.  What I don’t know is how to get from the former to the latter.

In the end, I don’t really know anything. So I leave off writing and I go to my son’s room, grab his little blanket from the bed as bait and lure him to me. He resists—he is, after all, building a castle, important work—but the blanket's inevitable pull draws him to flop, finally, into my lap and release into me, to suck his thumb (this last remnant of his babyhood), to let me cradle him like I did when he was a baby and I was even less certain than I am now of what the future would hold. I curl around him and we listen to 'Black Magic Woman':

Don't turn your back on me, baby....

I bury my face in his tousled hair and breathe in the familiar scent of my magical, perfect three-year-old boy: campfire and Nilla wafers.

“I love you Mommy,” he mumbles around the sides of his thumb.

“I love you too, Boo-Ba.” I squeeze him a bit tighter.

“And I love Daddy a lot.”

“Me too,” I whisper, laying my cheek on top of his Nilla-campfire head.

Me too.

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If this had happened last week I could have blamed it for my kid dropping the F-bomb, but alas

I've really been wanting to get Frog his own little "boombox" for awhile. (This reminds me of this one time when I was in, oh, sixth grade or so and I said I wanted a "ghettoblaster"--this was the term EVERYBODY used for a portable radio back then!--and my mom jumped all over it and made me promise never to say it again because it denigrated a group of people...my mom rocks. I had not even considered the components of the word until then). So anyway, we bought Frog this little $25 boombox cd player thingie. I should mention that I am sort of anti-noise. I mean, not as bad as gloppy things--if I had to choose between eating yogurt and listening to loud music, I'd pass out, and then wake up and choose the music. Aquaman has this thing where when I am not home he loves noise--he works in a damn wood shop most of the day, after all--so frequently I'll walk in the house and he has the radio on, the TV on, the dishwasher going, and he's on speakerphone. THIS IS LIKE STABBING ME IN THE HEAD DEAR GOD OH MY GOD MAKE IT STOP.

But anyway, so we got Frogboy the radio so he can listen to music in his room. I have five or so CD's of kids' music that I bought when he was a baby and we just never listen to, and I was going to employ those, but then Aquaman remembered he had literally over 100 CD's in this box under the bed, of all the stuff he's burned to his iPod. So he just GIVES Frog the box without looking at it.

Which is how I came home today to my three year old listening to the soundtrack from motherfucking 8 MILE. Yes, that's right. Eminem. He's a big fan of the lyric in "Lose Yourself" that mentions "mom's spaghetti." Good times.

I went all Tipper Gore on his ass and confiscated half of the CD's. He has now decided that his faves are Johnny Cash, Elvis, and Fleetwood Mac. I am hoping that "A Boy Named Sue" will outweigh Eminem. SOON.

Once Upon a Mattress, or: A King-Sized Douchebag

Just so you know, I'm not a spoiled person. I buy most of my clothes at, like, Target. I have never spent more than $99 on a pair of shoes, and that was a splurge and they were real leather and they were knee-high boots so I felt like there was more square footage for the dollar. My favorite meal is macaroni and cheese. I have never owned anything that says Coach or Gucci or Manolo Blahnik on it or, now, Tory Burch, whoever the hell that is. But where it really becomes apparent that I do not have expensive tastes is the bed I sleep in (on? whatever.). When we first got married, we were starting college (yes, and no I was not knocked up) and we slept on the FULL mattress set that my husband had as a teenager at home, directly on the floor. When the rusty springs finally started poking through and giving us lockjaw in our sleep--sometime in 1995, when we moved to Chicago--we bought a new, still FULL-sized, mattress set at American Mattress (donotevergotoAmericanMattress). We are not big people (and back then we were even more not-big), but said mattress set--which was still directly on the floor--got big scooped-out places in it pretty quickly. Despite that, we slept on it for, oh, another TEN YEARS. About halfway through that, we bought a headboard/footboard from a coworker of mine. Well, we thought she was giving it to us, actually, because the company had sent her one that was missing a bolt, and she had contacted them for the bolt and they sent her a whole new set, so she wanted to know, when we were moving, if we wanted to come pick up the one that had a bolt missing. Sure, we said. We picked it up. Thanked her profusely. Went home and put it together. And when I went back to work on Monday she asked me for $100. I gave her $50. She was always doing, shall we say, "endearing" little switcheroos like that. Anyway.

Only when I got pregnant did I realize how freaking ridiculously uncomfortable our bed was.So as soon as Frog was born, we bought a new, comfy, Simmons Beautyrest Mattress set. On craigslist. Actually, awesome bed, extra firm. Barely used because the owner realized it was just too firm for her tastes. So we've slept on that until now. And our frame has been an antique sleigh bed that my husband got for FREE and refurbished. So that's been our bed until now. Until now. NOW = when I have decided that if my husband so much as breathes near me when I am trying to sleep I will kill him. 

I should mention: I love my husband. And we get along great during the day. But oh my god, if ANYONE tries to talk to me at night or disturb me in any way they will wish they were never born. 

Enter: KIIIIING SIIIIIIZED BEDDDDD!!!! <insert chorus of angels singing Hosanna, etc>

So, I splurge. I still seek out a bargain, but I buy a NEW mattress set AND a new wooden frame, from www.us-mattress.com. (So far I am very pleased with their prices and their service, but that's not what this post is about. They are great so far, though.)

So, I realize have a choice, I can either PAY them $200 to take away my old bed, or I can sell it. I am a craigslist FANATIC (I have sold baby clothes, baby toys, my maternity clothes, that dollhouse I wrote about on here, my old kitchen cabinets, my old refrigerator and stove....Aquaman is lucky I didn't sell him. Only thing stopping me was the free labor.)

I listed my bed frame and mattress set on craigslist over weekend. Had a TON of people who would have come Saturday and paid me $450, but because the renovation on my building's elevator has gone past schedule (gosh that never happens), they have very strict rules right now about move ins/outs and deliveries, meaning I could sell the bed only to someone who could come weekdays between 10am and 2pm. Ridiculous. Only person who could come at that time was this polish guy Iulian (<-- not a typo, begins with an "eye") who wanted to pay only $250 for everything. Finally after a weekend of no other nibbles for a weekday pickup I relented and said fine, if you can come at noon on Monday, you can have it for $250. 

So our man 'Yoolian' shows up an hour late (because he got in a fender bender in the U-Haul) with his eurotrash sister and some dude he hired at U-haul (you know, the crackheads that hang out on the corner waiting for work?). So he comes upstairs into my home with the guy, who starts casing the joint: "Wow, this is a really nice place you've got here...nice TV." This is when I became really glad I have a doorman and 24 hour security and a buzzer system to get up. They come into my bedroom (you know, as I retell this, I am thinking, "Wow, this could have been the next episode of Dateline") and I'm all nice, asking if he's OKAY after the accident, etc, and then I look down and realize that the crackhead he hired has tracked mud onto my cream-colored bedroom carpet. 

Except, oh, it's not mud....

IT'S DOG POOP. 

And then i realize MY BEDROOM SMELLS LIKE DOG SHIT. 

uguh *passes out* <thud>

So I am CLEARLY not amused and I make the "helper" go wait in the hallway. He asks "Do you have newspaper?" No i don't have any fucking newspaper. Go stand in the hallway. So I'm complaining in my "nice but HINT HINT YOU SHOULD COMPENSATE ME FOR THIS" tone, "oh noooo, if the hallway has to be shampooed I'm going to get fined, PLUS i have to rent a shampooer for my bedroom, this is terrible"). So skinny little Yoolian in his white and blue track suit (yes, really) has to lift the whole frame by himself because I won't let his hired hand back in my house. So he gets it all out in the hall, and then he comes in to give me money and says, "Oh do you haf shange, all I haf is hundthred dolar beels." He shows me and, in fact, he has SEVEN one hundred dollar bills. I DON'T, actually, have any change.

Let's recap, shall we?

Mattress set plus wooden frame beautifully refurbished by my husband, listed for: $450

What I am talked down to because of circumstances beyond my control: $250

SHIT ALL OVER MY CREAM COLORED BEDROOM CARPET: priceless

So he says...

(wait for it...)

"Vell can i geef you $200?"

<insert RAGE BLACKOUT here>

I let him HAVE IT. And by "it" I do not mean, "the bed for $200")

"ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING MEEEE?!?!?!?!? You should be ROUNDING UP to THREE hundred so I can get my carpet cleaned! What the hell is the matter with you?"

He says, "Eef you vant tree hundred I vill just bringing ze bed back inside." So I say, "Like HELL you will! I have taken apart my bed and slept on the floor for two nights BECAUSE YOU SAID you were coming to get it, and I gave you tips on where to rent a truck from" [U-Haul is cheaper than Home Depot, where he was going to go] "and you did all that and got the truck and picked up your sister and hired a worker but you didn't have the foresight to BRING EXACT CHANGE? Are you fucking JOKING?" Let's keep in mind that he had shown me the contents of his wallet (to prove that he had no change) and there are SEVEN hundred-dollar bills in there.  So then he empties out his wallet and miraculously comes up with $248, so he's two bucks short. So I said, fine, gimme that and just get the fuck out of my building.

I slammed the door and sent them our to hold their own goddamn elevator doors open and hopefully get locked out of the building and have to go around front to get the second load. But maybe that's just wishful thinking.

The GOOD part of the story is, I saw Youssif (one of our engineers) downstairs and asked him if I could borrow the carpet shampooer. He sent Mario (sweet smiley young maintenance guy) up with it and he came in and he listened to me tell the whole story and said, "I'll take care of this for you, don't worry." It took him five minutes and I tipped him $20 and now my carpet smells like shampoo and NOT SHIT.

The even better part is that, after two nights of sleeping on a FULL sized aerobed that Frog has broken by using it as a trapoline, so that I had to inflate it 8 times over the course of the night, the NEW bed was delivered yesterday (just the mattress set, not the wooden frame yet) and OH MY LORDY is it comfy. I got a plush firm, "Monrovia," Simmons Beautyrest. In case you're in the market. It's awesome. I hit the snooze button four times this morning. Aquaman slept through HIS alarm and missed swimming laps. I woke up so relaxed and happy, I'm actually thinking that therapists might not be necessary if everyone had this bed, in a king. I woke up WITHOUT AN ABIDING HATRED FOR THE MAN WHO HAD KICKED ME ALL NIGHT. Because he might have been a-kickin', but he COULD NOT REACH ME. I am in my own little sleep country, folks. Similar to Camelot, it's not allowed to rain til after sundown.

Also in my sleep country, we have high thread count sheets. 

Alarms sound really really far away.

Everything smells like freshly shampooed carpet.

And no one here speaks Polish.

When Readers Attack

Fear not, gentle readers. I have not "actually" been "attacked." I have simply been "nudged" by loyal reader "Ed," who keeps telling his diary about how I've abandoned him. I love this, not only because it makes me feel important, but because this is exactly the reason I started a blog. My idea back then was to blog in order to get myself writing and to KEEP myself writing, because in my mind's eye I would ostensibly have established some sort of responsibility to somebody. It is oh so easy to put off things that you enjoy (like, for me, writing, yoga, eating) in favor of powering through the day getting a million little sniggety to-do list workity-work things done until finally, at night, you collapse in front of, say, True Blood with your honey. But when you get stuff in your comments section from people saying they miss you, and then you look and see how many subscribers you have and that they didn't go away and are still waiting for you to say something....well, gosh darn it, it makes you feel all warm and gooey inside. So you write. Not, like, mind-blowingly awesome prose--I just don't have the energy for this right now--not that anything on here has necessarily been mind-blowingly awesome, but work with me here.

So, as a means of catching ya'll up real quick-like so that I can move forward from here and still make sense, here's a quick rundown. Okay, making sense is a high bar. Let's aim for recognizable English, shall we?

Dear Ed's Diary (et al),

Here's what I've been doing:

Vacation: Vacation is good. You should take one. Water parks are fun. I didn't used to like them, or even enjoy getting my face wet in the shower, actually, but wow. Fun. Who knew? It is also nice to see family, when you can. What is not fun is trying to do three vacations in quick succession at the end of the summer. Because then you come back to work and you cry and you don't write in your blog anymore.

Work: Really really busy with, like, work stuff that would so not interest you. Stuff that makes my brain hurt. And a lot of it. Note to self: Taking basically three successive weeks off and then having to get ready for a big big big meeting coming up, sort of exponentially makes it so that it feels as if you've actually gotten 9 weeks behind, and as if while you were gone, a chimp was rearranging your files for you so everything would be 'easier' to 'find.' You come back and things don't really even look familiar. Is that my handwriting? you think, looking at your post-its. And then you get overwhelmed. And then you work and work and work until you can't work anymore. And when you work at home, the guy next door decides to fix something loudly with a hammer that sounds like someone packing cigarettes against their palm, which makes you want smokes even though you don't smoke anymore. And then when you're at the office, there are these pesky meetings. And people talking. And crazy crack ho ladies crashing into cars and ending up in a high-speed police chase that ends up dead-ended in your office building's parking lot, so that you are ordered to leave your office and come away from the window in case shots are fired. And the funny thing about that is that my office is in a very fancy suburb, and many of the coworkers that live near my office don't like to come into the city because it's dangerous there and there's a lot of traffic. Yes, but in our traffic, the crack hos don't speed or run lights, because we have those handy surveillance cameras.

PHOTOS: Dad's houseboat; Aquaman & FrogBoy jet skiing at sunset; FrogBoy waiting for the plane home

School: Frogboy's new school is AWESOME. His teacher is this really cool, Guatemalan, vegan (I am a vegan vicariously through her, as I eat bacon). lady who even has a supercool name and tons of experience and a real curriculum and who plans to teach about the environment and have the kids put together school supply backpacks for kids in Africa and just, wow, super cool stuff. It's weird to be at a big school that has big kids in it, too (unliek the insular private preschool where my kid WAS a big kid), but it's weird in a good way. And he loves it. There has not been one single fit of clinginess, he always wants to go, and he loves packing his lunch (public school lunch in Chicago SUCKS, by the way, and don't even get me started on the breakfast, which most days is FROOT LOOPS. Huh?). He is a BIG BOY NOW and loving it. Especially the accessories: lunchbox with litlte bento box thingies inside, water bottle, Wall-E backpack....

Frog Quotes:
first day of school, wearing an "S is for Spaceship" t-shirt:
"Look Mommy, S is for Rocket!"
Impressing the new teacher? Fail.

later...
Aquaman: "What'd you do at school today, kiddo?"
Frog: "Nothing."
Aquaman: "NOTHING? You just sat and stared at each other all day?"
Frog: "Yes like this": (pouts & glares)
Aquaman: "Wow, that sounds boring. Do they not have any toys to play with at school?"
Frog: (rolls eyes) "Of COURSE they have TOYS , Daddy, or else we would have to LEARN all the time!"

making pretend ice cream cones at home in his room as I play "customer."
me: "Can I have mint chocolate chip?"
Frog: "No you can't eat that one because, because it is not a good flavor for girls it is a recipe only for a MAN so you eat this choklit one."

My Sister:
She's doing great, except for that whole thing a few hours after her surgery where she go up to go to the restroom (because the nurses said it was ok) and the incision sites on both side of her groin area (front of hips, kind of) started SPEWING BLOOD EVERYWHERE. My mother got this really high-pitched "everythingisfinedontworryaboutmeimnotabouttopassoutatall" voice when she was recounting this story. Sadly, I was not there to witness. Sounds like a scene out of Kill Bill 2.  Margot is really into Halloween, so, you know, it added to the decor (and then she didn't need to buy the baby oil). Thank you so much to all of you who sent me private messages or made comments or twittered for updates. She's recuperating well now except she is still very skinny. She's me, like, minus forty pounds. And I'm no skinny minny, but I don;t really have forty pounds to lose, so yeah, too skinny. She is, however, getting to eat foods she has not eaten in YEARS because of the Crohn's. Like carrots. Who knew anyone would ever be excited about that? It's as if she's 6 months old and trying First Foods. Baby steps. Oh, and everyone is okay, post-flood. As long as they can get to a Chick-Fil-A SOMEHOW, my family will survive.

PHOTO: Dude, I just spent ten whole minutes looking for a photo of Lucy Liu with the top of her head chopped off, before I realized I have "inappropriate content" filtered on my google settings. Sometimes parenting sucks.

My mother:
Is back in Scotland. I find this both irritating and inconvenient. Make it stop.

Aquaman: ...is really enjoying this year of teaching. It's nice when people get to spend all day every day doing what they were meant to do...like, living their calling. You know? This is very unfamiliar to most people. I'm happy that he's happy. But it's kind of not fair that he has that AND he gets summers off. Oh wait, I made him build me a kitchen. Never mind.

Grad school: Taking my last class now. Last one ever. OMG now I might actually have to DO something with my life.

....Nah.

As for the Big Ass Exam, we should know any day now. They said two weeks. The options are fail, pass, and pass with commendation. I am such a nerd that I will be disappointed if I don't get commendation, of course. Probably too much to ask, since I didn't even finish Middlemarch. But come on: has ANYONE? I effing finished ULYSSES, for God's sake, but Middlemarch was just boring as hell. Oh and HEY: You know what's funny? Trying to read a book that big and imposing-looking at a waterpark. Yup, nothing to see here, folks, just a little light summer  reading...a little 18th-century Chick-Lit. after this it's Bridget Jones and then The Manny...

Kitchen:
So. So. Purty.

Other:
Yet again there are babies EVERYWHERE. A woman at work just had her second, and there was a shower for someone else yesterday, which really brought back the memories. I like babies--I love holding other people's babies. And then giving them back and sleeping all night.

And I really, REALLY love being asked CONSTANTLY by well-meaning adults when I am having my second one. Oh and my kid keeps begging me for a little sister. Awesome. This is from a while back but in case you missed it:
Frog: "[Friend] is really lucky to have a new baby, right Mommy?"
Me: "Sure...."
Frog: (nodding) "Yeah. Reeeally lucky."
Me: "Do you wish YOU had a baby?"
Frog: "Oh yes, I think so!"
Me: "Yeah, babies can be cuddly and nice to hold....but they don't really play with you until they're much older. And then they take your toys.
Frog: "That's okay Mommy I will share." (he kills me when he says things this sweet)
Me: "But what if we got a baby, and then it cried all night while you were trying to sleep?"
Frog: (laughing and walking away) "Mommy, that's silly; we wouldn't get the CRYING kind of baby."

Oh, glad we cleared that one up.

Clearly I ordered the wrong kind last time.

 

We All Scream....

So, I telecommute some days. My son is not there when I do, we've discussed that before. But his school is right down the street, so it means that should he get sick, or forget it's pajama day, or have some sort of neighborhood field trip (which has never happened before), then I can zip over there during lunch. Which I could not do otherwise since my office is, on a good day, at least 45 minutes from my house and on a bad day (Cubs game, Taste of Chicago, concert, EVERY EFFING DAY DURING THE SUMMER), two hours away. On a really bad day, three hours away. So.

There's never been a field trip before. I mean, these kids are three, where are they gonna go? But actually, last week, I arrive on Monday for drop-off and am given a PERMISSION SLIP for a field trip to the neighborhood ice cream shop. It's about two blocks away and across the street. They want chaperone volunteers. The trip is from 11:30-12:30. Perfect, I think. I'm in. And I'll bring my camera and be uber-mom and build memories to last a lifetime.

And then I get home and remember that it's effing BLOGHER that weekend and I am taking the day OFF on Friday because i will be downtown all day at a huge estrogen fest. I am not bringing my kid because he's not a cute little baby in a sling that will sleep, he is a preschooler who will sit there and say "Mommy why is that lady mean?" and "Mommy THIS IS BORING."

So I suck. It is my son's first field trip and I AM CHOOSING ME.

Guillllllllllllt.

Aquaman swoops in to save the day: "I'LL do it," he says, practically with hands in fists on his hips, elbows out. "It'll be fun." Sweet, I think. Mistakenly assuming (BECAUSE I WAS HIGH, APPARENTLY) that it will be JUST LIKE IF I WAS THERE. That he will take pictures and hold little kids' hands and make sure they cross the street carefully and all that stuff chaperones are supposed to do. I am relieved. Whew! I think. Now I do not feel guilty. My husband is very responsbile, he really is, and they will have a wonderful time.

I am so, so naive.

What my husband and son tell me: They did have a wonderful time. And it all went very well. They both got mint chocolate chip and it was yummy and they did a really good job taking turns.

What I find out from the other (mom) chaperones:

• My husband was late so he drove to the ice cream shop and MET THEM THERE. Thus negating the "chaperone" part of the job. Oh, I'm sure those teachers will be just fine herding 15 preschoolers across a busy intersection by themselves.
• And my son was weepy at the beginning because neither of his parents showed up. Nice.
• Husband arrives, son is thrilled, they get ice cream. Kids get theirs and head outside to the tables, which are right next to parked cars/busy street. Teachers and two mom chaperones are wrangling kids outside to keep them safe. Two dad chaperones are INSIDE.
• WAITING FOR THEIR OWN ICE CREAM CONES.
• Everyone eats, it's lovely. They get the kids cleaned up and ready to head back to school for naptime. My husband decides to just take FrogBoy home for the rest of the day.
• So they leave the group there.
• At the ice cream shop.
• Without helping them get back across the street and to the school.
• Without, that is, CHAPERONING.
• Also without picking up FrogBoy's blanket, pillowcase, bathing suit, and stuffed animal from his cubby.For the weekend.
• And they go straight home.
• EVEN THOUGH YOU HAVE TO WALK PAST THE SCHOOL TO GET TO OUR HOUSE.

Nice. None of this made any difference to my son, who thought his first-ever field trip was totally awesome. But me, here I am, worrying about what the other parents think of us, that I bailed and my husband doesn't understand the definition of "chaperone." This is where being momtrolling comes into play. Because I was Not Happy about this. I quipped that next time Aquaman was going to chaperone he'd have to pass some sort of training session first. I sought out and apologized to the other mom chaperones. And the teachers.

I fretted aloud about the moms and teachers being annoyed.

To which my husband replied, "Who gives a shit?"

And he's right. It was a thirty minute field trip to an ice cream store we go to all the time anyway. Why do I care what the other mommies think? Why do I care what the teachers think? Why am I so caught up in propriety and what's FAIR and what's THE RIGHT THING TO DO?

Well, because I don't want my kid to be THAT KID, the one who thinks hes entitled to everything, that the world revolves around him. It's not that my husband acts that way; this was just a case of cluelessness about what the job entailed. And they weren't crossing an eight-lane highway.

As far as I know, no one was particularly "put out" by my husband's lack of assistance. And the teachers would have had an easier time if they'd had one of those ropes with the handles on it for everybody to hold onto, like they said they were going to. But still.

Sometimes I feel like my kid will be somehow fucked up because I'm not there to dictate every moment of every day. Or that I'm less of a mom because I'm not there for everything, like that one time I wrote about for NPNParents Magazine when I missed his first steps and the nanny tried to pretend it didn't happen so she could get him to do it in front of me for "the first time." It's bad enough that, as I've been told before by a SAHM, "someone else is raising my child" because I work. Owwww. So I try to make up for it, I guess, by being A-W-E-S-O-M-E when I am there. Except that kids can tell when you're trying too hard to be cool. And I'm hardly ever awesome anyway, because I'm too tired from trying to be the perfect employee, perfect grad school student, perfect wife (whoa do I miss the mark on THAT one) to have energy to be the perfect mom. Perfect mom ends up getting the short end of the stick because it's the only one of those jobs that requires running and loud noises.

Not to mention that it's entirely possible to go too far in the other direction, and leave your kid totally fucked up precisely because you tried to control every moment of his life.

Better to relax, like Aquaman, and just not worry about it. Right?

Why oh why is my husband a better Buddhist than I am, when he's not a Buddhist at all?

F*ck Me Gently With a Chainsaw: In Which I Recap #BlogHer09 Whilst Simultaneously Equating it With the Film ‘Heathers’

 

 

*photo & quotes courtesy of imdb.com

 

 

“Dear Diary,”

As you can see from my pre-BlogHer post, I was kind of freaking out that my arm candy, Penny, had mistakenly thought that the SocialLuxe Lounge was on Friday and had gotten a sitter for THAT night, and thus was tragically unavailable to accompany me to not-win my BlogLuxe “Guilty Pleasure” award on Thursday.

“Hey, Martha Dumptruck. My date for the prom kinda flaked out on me. I was wondering, If you weren't doing anything that night, maybe we could rent some new releases and pop some popcorn.”

Having not been a girl on the town in quite some time, I was somewhat nervous (read: paralyzed) by the thought of having to socialize with a bunch of people I didn’t know, many of whom might be people I DID know, but I wouldn’t KNOW I knew, because they don’t look like their blog avatars. For instance, get this: Mom-101 is not a two dimensional 50’s lady, BlackHockeyJesus isn’t black (though there was a neverending supply of wine, so he might be Jesus), and Schmutzie’s face has a lower half. Who knew?

So I knew I could conceivably commit a ginormous faux pas (my life is comprised almost entirely of moments when I say something snarky and the person I am speaking to freezes and I say, “He’s standing RIGHT. BEHIND. ME. Isn’t he?”), and not even know it, because I don’t know what anyone really looks like. And they’ve all met before so they DO know. I could have been talking to the IRL equivalent of my entire Google Reader page.

It was like going to a huge masquerade ball where everyone but you has x-ray vision.

“You blow it tonight, girl, and it's keggers with kids all next year.”

So I go, and I wander around briefly. I get my hair ‘did’ by the straight-hair lady and it looks so good I wonder if I can get away without washing it for the whole weekend. And maybe the wedding I have to go to next weekend. Too much? Maybe. And there was good food.

“Grow up Heather, bulimia's so '87.”

But I’m scared to eat any appetizers because I have this one slightly crooked tooth that acts as a magnet for food, especially green food. You can SHOW ME a piece of broccoli from across the room and it will end up in my teeth. So, no food.

So I got a manicure. This kept me busy for awhile. Then I went and fetched my enormous “swag bag.”  Which weighed as much as a human so it was almost like having arm candy, except for the lack of sparkling conversation.

I was then having a shitty, shitty, time, so I took matters into my own hands. I ripped off the bandaid. I went up to a four-top where two impeccably dressed women were seated. I said something witty. I (sincerely) complimented a dress. I introduced myself properly. Now look: I am reasonably good looking. I was dressed nicely. I am no Martha Dumptruck. And yet, I was dissed. Oh, sure, they ‘allowed’ me to sit at their table, but they turned away, in towards each other. As if my half of the table had just fallen off the face of the earth. (Except when it fell back onto the earth long enough for them to ask me to take their picture, and then they walked away). Whuh. Tha. Fuck.

Veronica: “I'm on my way to a party at Remington University... No, my life's not perfect. I don't really like my friends…It's just like - they're people I work with, and our job is being popular and shit.”
J.D.: “Maybe it's time to take a vacation.”

[Edit: In a huge lesson in the area of 'YOUR BLOG IS PUBLIC,' I have actually now been contacted by BOTH of the aforementioned "Heathers" and I have to say, they are LOVELY. They both have excellent blogs--you can find them in the comments below--and are great ladies. As it turns out, they were mortified by the situation of knowing almost no one at the party, and what came off as "Heatherishness" was actually shyness. They were not the "in crowd" I thought they were. Lesson learned. My perception has less to do with how they acted, probably, and more to do with my middle-school baggage. ANYWAY. They both live in the Chicago area, how great is that? So I get a second chance. I am having a playdate after work today with one of them! How insane is THAT? Her son is just one week older than my son. I'm not telling you where we're meeting, because we're all, so, like, famous 'n shit, we don't want to be worried about paparazzi. So anyway, I just want to publicly say, even though I did not identify them personally in the original post, that I'm sorry I took it personally and I really am happy that they walked away because that's how I met my Sex and the City gals. And now I'm getting to meet THEM, too, so it's all good. See how wonderful women can be? Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled programming.)

So, out on the market again, I nursed my emotional wounds and decided to do a better job next time of scouting out my prey. I was having horrible middle-school flashbacks of no one to sit with in the cafeteria, and I knew that if I was going to make the next two days WORK, I had to figure something out.

And there they were. Imagine them with me, in slow-motion, if you will: A lovely, bouncy-haired pair (you got caught up on the words “bouncy” and “Pair,” didn’t you? Well, they had those two, but let’s stay on track, shall we?) of slightly-younger-than-me, non-baby-toting ladies dressed in fabulous evening attire, standing up at a tall table and laughing their asses off. My new BFFs. I don’t quite remember what I said to them, but I walked right up and I am certain the phrase “YOU MUST HELP ME, I KNOW NO ONE” was used. They immediately accepted me, we chatted, and I felt within minutes as if I’d know them for years. These two glorious, beautiful, hilarious women, Kate and Monika, would become my BFFs for the next two days. They waited with me while I confirmed I was not, in fact, a winner of the BlogLuxe category. They told me I was robbed even though they’d never read my blog. We waited together for henna mehndi tattoos and then complimented each other’s hands for the next two days. They let me put my shit in their hotel room, for fuck’s sake. I had a whole corner of their room designated for my shit. I practically had my own key. They were JUST. LOVELY. And we had a blast together. I cannot remember the last time I was that drunk without getting laid. After SocialLuxe, we stood on the street corner at Lower Wacker together and cheered like lunatics when the President’s motorcade drove by (he left at the same time we did, only without a manicure).

“Our love is God, let's go get a Slushie.”

These amazing girls from Cincinnati rescued my sorry ass from what would certainly have been BlogHer hell. It was awesome that I was dissed the first time around (yeah, that’s right, BITCHES, take THAT!), or I would not have found them. Actually, it was awesome that Penny couldn’t make it, because I would have talked to her the whole time and then had to start over again on Friday morning. Which leads us to…

 “Did you have a brain tumor for breakfast?’

I go about my morning on Friday, not realizing that I never ate dinner the night before. I am hungover so I also do not have breakfast. I stand in a ridiculously long line to pick up my badge, fretting the whole time that they won’t have it and I’ll have no proof of buying it (I was able to attend only out of the generosity of Genie, who had something come up and sold me her pass a few weeks before the conference). They do have it. Hallelujah. I miss the first session. I get there right as they are starting this speed-dating thing. It’s too much for first thing in the morning with the first hangover I’ve had in two years. I step back out. I ridicule myself silently for being like a little squirrel who tries to get close to the nuts but can’t really get up enough courage to just grab them out of the Big Scary Hand.

Inside the room, two enormous concentric circles of women are rotating in opposite directions at one-minute intervals, laughing and yelling, with the occasional baby hand stretching out of the perfect circle, like the errant limb of a confused dancer from a Busby Berkeley-choreographed 1930’s musical.

Okay, deep breath. My partners in crime were still sleeping off the previous night’s activities (“sleeping in” is still in their vocabulary, those sweet child-free princesses), so I figured, I’ll try out the first session on the “Mommyblogging” track, something about Finding Your Tribe. I am, in fact, a mom who blogs. Natch, right?  

I walk in and my senses are immediately assaulted by eight shades of pink, fourteen crying infants, five ladies handing out bags of “Strawberry Shortcake” swag, and a parrrtriiiidge in a peeeaar treeeeee. Whatever my tribe is, this ain’t it. The woman next to me glances longingly at my apparently sought-after, endangered-species-list-enrolled bag of smelly pink dolls. “I don’t belong here,” I say, and I hand her the bag. I back slowly out of the room.

I had not, in fact, found my tribe.

“The only place different social types can genuinely get along with each other is in heaven.”

I am phoned by Dorothy Tucker from Channel 2 and asked to meet at 10:30am in the lobby so she can interview me about being at BlogHer. I assume this is related to a similar request from a Chicago print media person who wanted to interview me about the FTC thing, as I have a rather outspoken disclosure policy on my blog. I agree to meet her. She doesn’t show. Then she calls me from the exhibit hall. I go down there, but she talks for 30 minutes to some marketing person (while I look like an asshole media whore who is begging to be interviewed and want to make a sign to wear that says à THIS CHICK CALLED ME ON MY PHONE, I SWEAR). Then she tells me she wants to interview me at my house sometime in the coming week. Fine. (Later, she sets that up, then cancels it. Good lord. I feel like I need a personal assistant. It shouldn’t be so hard. I have a cell phone and e-mail and a Twitter account. Setting up an interview with me should not have me feeling like I am on Amazing Fucking Race).

Heather Duke: “Veronica, you look like hell.”
Veronica Sawyer: “Yeah? I just got back.”

I attend Blog to Book, an awesome session on getting published. I’m interested in that from both a non-fiction blog perspective and also from a fiction novel (that I’ve had in the works for a while) perspective, so it was fascinating to me. Good connections made. I find myself wishing that in addition to a “Mommy” Track and a “Business” track there would also be a “CRAFT” track. Very few of the sessions touched on the craft of writing. Almost none of the sessions had working wi-fi. AT A BLOGGING CONFERENCE. I get frustrated with the laptop and take notes on a little steno pad like I am Lois Lane.

“Chaos was what killed the dinosaurs, darling.”

That night, I change into fancy clothes in Kate & Monika’s room (see? They are so awesome) and we head out on the town. We get there early for one party in the lobby and sit quietly, drinking our wine, on the edge of the fountain. We are quickly overtaken by hordes of crazy women vying for free shit, because there is a rumor that THERE BE VIBRATORS IN THEM THAR SWAG BAGS. DUDE. You can buy your own vibrating vagina bunny for fucking $15. Batteries weren’t even included. Can I have that clump of my hair back now? STEP. OFF. BITCH.

“What is your damage, Heather?”

We go to the EA party at House of Blues and have a LOVELY time having REAL cocktails (like, not only beer and wine) and excellent food, trying to figure out if there’s anything we can safely all eat given Monika’s mushroom intolerance and my shellfish allergy. We decide it’s safer to just stick to booze.

“Great pate, mom, but I gotta motor if I wanna be ready for that party tonight.”

Monika and Kate go to the Lush Cosmetics party which is trés chic but I am not on the list, so I head over to the Mommy Needs a Cocktail party and engage in some semi-lame wandering around and the worst vodka-lemonade I’ve ever had in my life until I meet A REAL LIVE TABLE FULL OF BLOGGERS WHO ARE MOMS BUT DO NOT HAVE BABIES ACTUALLY ON THEIR PERSONS AND WHO ARE VERY VERY FUNNY AND WHAT’S MORE THEY LIKE ME THEY REALLY LIKE ME. I’m scared to name them here because I was very drunk by this point and I am sure I will leave someone out. But here goes: @alldressedup, @spuddybuddy, @shelly_overlook,, @omg_youguys. We bonded for REE-UL. And later, @bernthis. When they were headed out I reunited with Kate at the Sparklecorn party (to which I was also not invited, but they owed me because they stoled my bling. Just kidding.). We danced to eighties music and I was in LOVE.

I also got to meet Marinka, and on and on. People I read every week. And I got to attend an amazing storytelling session in which I talked shop with Schmutzie, and BHJ, and Neil Kramer, and Amy Turn Sharp, holy crap. Too awesome to explain.

Ooh, and the week wouldn’t be complete without getting to piss off the panelists in the Sponsored vs Unsponsored “Room of Your Own,” but come on, both panelists had the same opinion, so somebody had to speak up on the other side of the coin. I could have been nicer, but I told them their whining was annoying and misguided, and that it’s just false that it’s boys picking on us because we’re girls and they think we’re stupid (yes, that was what the panelist had said).

“The extreme always seems to make an impression.”

One woman who shall remain nameless BECAUSE I AM NICE practically yanked the mic out of my hand to complain that Obama was the cause of the FTC troubles, but was kindly informed by, like, everyone who knew how to read that it had actually started during the Bush administration. Good times.

“Some people need different kinds of convincing than others.”

I’m sure I made some enemies then, but I also made some friends as there were many, many people in that session who agreed with me, that blogging usually is (or usually should be) about writing, not about getting free shit.

Veronica Sawyer: “All we want is to be treated like human beings, not to be experimented on like guinea pigs or patronized like bunny rabbits.”
Veronica's Dad: “I don't patronize bunny rabbits.”

I also got to meet Tim Gunn, which was awesome, especially since I got to stand in line for a long time with @leeofmwob and @debwilliams, friends I made from the sponsorship session. And I got to meet Carson Kressley as well. But you know, neither of those lovely men is really, um, oozing with masculinity. After two and a half days of OD’ing on estrogen, I found myself wanting to have some masculine interaction.

Geek: Ah, oh, uh! I like to suck big dicks. Or, uh... Mmmm! Mmmm! I can't get enough of 'em!

No, not that kind, you slut: you know, like, a baseball game, or Home Depot.

“This isn't just a spoke in my menstrual cycle.”

There was so much estrogen, in fact, that my period started a whole week early. I shit you not. I texted my husband, “Thank you for holding down the fort this weekend. You are SO getting laid tomorrow.” Or at least that’s what I thought I texted him. He replied back, “WHAT IS LAIF?”

I guess I should just be thankful I didn’t send that message to my dad or something.

So let’s see, to recap:

·         I met tons of people I admire.

·         I smoked a pack of cigarettes in two days, even though I quit five years ago (don’t worry, I haven’t had one since Sunday and now I have a nice sore throat to pay for it).

Veronica's Dad: “Will someone tell me why I smoke these damn things?”
Veronica Sawyer: “Because you're an idiot.”
Veronica's Dad: “Oh yeah, that's it.”

·         I pissed some people off.

·         I drank a shit ass ton of alcohol.

·         I lived on nothing but appetizers, booze, and bar mix for three days.

·         I handed out cute business cards and people squeed about them.

·         I made some amazing friends that are already keeping me from working with their insanely funny Tweets.

Maybe next year someone will be excited to meet ME “in real life.” At the very least, I will know people when I walk in the room. Which is good, because I have no arm candy in NYC.  I spent a lot of time at BlogHer09 trying to figure out where I fit in, and that made it an awful lot like middle- and high-school. In the end, I found at least two crowds that I could bounce between, and that's great. I can be different things at different times. I don't always write about my kid. Sometimes I write about random crap that pisses me off, or advertising, or my extended family. As long as I am writing my own truth (or some version thereof), it doesn't really matter. It's my real life.

“Dear Diary: Heather told me she teaches people "real life." She said, real life sucks losers dry. You want to fuck with the eagles, you have to learn to fly. I said, so, you teach people how to spread their wings and fly? She said, yes. I said, You're beautiful.”

I have already registered for BlogHer10. And I’m making a pledge here and now: if I meet you the first night, and you are cool, I will TOTALLY LET YOU KEEP YOUR SHIT IN MY ROOM.

How to Piss Me Off at Home Depot, Method #47,983

So. I'm at Home Depot with AquaMan and FrogBoy, and FrogBoy needs a snack, and thank God there's this girl handing out fresh popcorn in tiny bags, perfect, so I'm un-pissed-off at first, yay Home Depot for feeding my kid, thank you. We get our faucet and our non-skid rug backing crap and our grout for the backsplash tile please God will this be over soon, and then my husband makes the mistake of pilfering ONE. PIECE. OF POPCORN from FrogBoy's bag. FrogBoy, being three, is very good at sharing, but he had a point, DADDY DID NOT ASK FIRST. Three year old crying in Home Depot, my favorite sound effect. So I send Daddy off for a "time out" (to smoke a cigarette in the parking garage) while we check out. The cashier asks why my son is crying and he tells her and she oh-so-helpfully offers the following two tidbits of information:
1. YOU CAN HAVE MORE POPCORN. GO GET TWO! YOU CAN HAVE AS MUCH POPCORN AS YOU WANT.
2. You should stop crying because BIG BOYS DON'T CRY.

Neither of these statements, of course, is true. First of all, it is 2009. Secondly, last time we went to the movies, to see the new Ice Age sequel (review: Eh.), he ate so much popcorn (BECAUSE I AM A HORRIBLE MOTHER AND I DID NOT REGULATE HIS INTAKE) that he had a belly ache for two days. So NO, he may not, in fact, have as much popcorn as he wants. Thank you. Bitch.

And in case you are making excuses for her in your head because you've envisioned her as a kindly old lady, allow me to enlighten you, this was not WalMart, which employs kindly old ladies, this was Home Depot, which generally employs people who can lift stuff without breaking a hip or having a heart attack, and this woman was about 30ish.

Back to my story.

Quit interrupting with your annoyingly inaccurate interior monologue.

So, I ignore her comments the first time she says them and I pay. Frog is not crying anymore, so there's no need to belabor it. And yet as we walk away she says, "Don't forget to get more popcorn! Annnnnnd remember..." she says, as if she's effing Captain Kangaroo, "Only babies cry!"

Everything in my power, people. EV. UR. EEEEEE. THANG.

I just walked away.

Aren't you proud?!?!?

What I wanted to say was, "Bitch, it is not nineteenfiftyfuckingtwo, for the love of god. He is three years old. He can cry every now and then. He hardly ever cries, but christ on a bike, he hardly gets to make any of his own decisions and we just made him leave a playground and come to Home Depot to shop for GROUT without feeding him a snack first and then his Dad stole his motherfucking popcorn, so you know what? He's entitled. But nooo, you have to call him a baby AND tell him he can have all the popcorn he wants, awesome, thank you. Not to nitpick but, babies can't even EAT popcorn. So in your opinion, is he a) a baby who can NOT, in fact, have more popcorn, or b) he CAN have popcorn because he's a big boy WHO CRIES. Which is it? Hmmmmmm? Thought so. Quit talking to my kid."

And then of course on the way home I dissect it: does he cry too easily? Is he a wimp? Were the eight months of repeatedly being bitten by the same kid at his almost-not-anymore school (yay, hallelujah) enough to lead him to a pattern of always being victimized, never sticking up for himself? When he got pushed off the teeter-totter the other day by that seven year old, should I have stepped in as i did or should I have let him handle it himself? (I mean look, if it was another three year old, hands-down, he can handle it, but a SEVEN year old whose parents/nanny/parole officer are nowhere to be found? That's like me against Andre the Giant. No contest. If I were him, I would want backup.)
What to do?

The question I ended up asking myself is this:
Is teaching my kid that it's ok to have emotions, and to let others have a turn and share nicely and wait in line instead of pushing forward, and to say please and thank you and yes ma'am and no sir actually so out of the norm in today's society that he will be considered a total pussy just because he's polite? I'm not going to stop teaching him those things, but should I counteract them too, sign him up for Judo or something? Pee Wee Ultimate Fighting?

Can I just go to Home Depot without encountering these sorts of existential crises?

Would that be so much to ask?

Suck it, Home Depot Cashier.

Sincerely,

Momtrolfreak

2, 4, 6, 8, We Effing Hate to Renovate!

We hate it! Yeah, yeah, we hate it! Yeah, yeah!

So here's the progress:

BEFORE (Les Miserables)

DURING (A Tale of Two Fridges)

Old cabinets removed from premises by nice craigslist dude building a kitchen for his mom: +$200

Craigslist dude also taking and dumping 5 bags of construction debris and a bunch of old flooring for us since we live in a high rise and can't dump it here: $0

New appliances from Abt, the best appliance store on the planet (this is not a paid review, I just seriously effing love those people): -$2700

New water line and electric for new fridge location done by husband: $0

Some more construction debris carted away by Abt dudes just because they are nice: $0

Old stove taken away by building manager: +$100

Old fridge taken away by some Craigslist lady tomorrow: +$225

New floors for entire condo purchased: $4000

New floors 80% installed after one week: $0

Seven gallons of paint: $200

Entire house painted in one weekend: $0

Cabinets being delivered on the 11th: $6000

Cabinets being installed on the 11th: $0

Total price of entire kitchen makeover:  $14,000

How much it WOULD have cost if my husband didn't DIY the whole damn thing: $40,000

Sleeping with your contractor: PRICELESS

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Papa Don't Preach

Father’s Day has always been fraught with complications for me. To be more precise, fathers have always been fraught with complications for me. My father, in particular. Not a good vibe there, during ye olde childhoode. My dad and I get along now, surprisingly well, though there were years in there (eight to be exact, including my wedding) in which we did not speak at all, not once. By my choice. More on that some other time. But I think I’m so spoiled by how awesome my husband is, in so many ways, these days, that I forget how generally crappy a lot of other husbands/dads are. I mean, you know, we've had some pretty bad times, and there were times I've wanted to murder him, sure, but mostly? and recently? I feel really lucky.

So.

To the love of my life, fire of my loins:

Thank you for thinking I was a cute young thing, lo these many years ago in high school drama club, and for changing your dating paradigm (a. choose homely girl, b. kiss her, c. invite her best friend to prom like a total jerk) in order to be with me.

Thank you for marrying me even though your mother pretty much thought I was a heathen for not being born again and blamed me for your lack of relationship with Jesus (not having noticed, apparently, that you’d either slept through every church service for fourteen years or spent the entire sermon flipping through the hymnal so you could add "...in the bed" to the end of the all the titles: Jesus Loves Me In the Bed, He is My Rock In the Bed, Fill Me With Your Spirit In the Bed. Good stuff).

Thank you for wearing that god-awful tux I picked out even though it made you look like a butler with tortoiseshell glasses and a ducktail (actually, considering the ducktail and glasses, you should be thanking me for marrying you. Oh wait, you do that, all the time).

Thank you for not totally freaking out when I decided after fourteen years of marriage that wait, I did want to have kids after all.

Thank you for being there. For me, for our son. For supporting me while I go through grad school one class at a time for three effing years. For not once, not ever telling me, “You really should have gotten that Master’s out of the way BEFORE you had the kid.” For not once, not ever complaining about being on solo parenting duty pretty much every Tuesday night for three years so I can go talk about writing and literature. For telling me constantly how brilliant I supposedly am. For telling me what a good mom I am when I feel like a shitty one, and for forgiving me and stepping in to save the day when I actually AM a shitty one.  For reminding me, speaking of which, not to curse in front of the boy.

For telling me to turn off the computer and come look at the sunset.

Or to come watch So You Think You Can Dance.

For never questioning my purchases.

For putting the boy to bed every night while I go to the gym or take a shower or write.

Thank you for being super excited along with me about FrogBoy’s first tae kwon do class, as we both frosted the hallway windows with our breath, laughing about how freaking cute he was kicking and shouting "keeyah!".  And thank you for even BEING at the class to begin with, for doing things WITH us. I noticed you were the only dad there. The other moms were catty about our adoration from the sidelines (they themselves being too jaded to watch their four year olds in class) and acted like The Heathers, but I realize now that it might have been because I was the only one there who had my husband with me, at 4:30pm on a Friday. (And only one child, no baby crying to be changed or toddler begging for Cheerios, or both. Clearly I am a whore who must be punished.)  

Thank you for being involved with our son’s preschool, and for doing adorable little carpentry activities with him and his friends when it’s your turn to visit the class, and for making him feel special when you let 'Onnnnnnly FrogBoy' touch the hand saw, because he had “the training” to use it correctly.

Thank you for giving me your honest opinion always, but still knowing when you really just need to tell me I’m right. Or to say nothing and just massage my shoulders until they release from their current disguise as earmuffs.

Thank you for buying groceries this Thursday, and for any other time you’ve done that. Because even though I write this cereal down on the list:

...and you inexplicably get this cereal instead (and yes, the size difference is accurate)...

...forgetting that I fucking hate generic cereal and what's more, that they don't MAKE cabinets big enough to hold a box that big, WHAT. THAFUCK...

...but still, I didn’t have to buy the groceries my own damn self. Thank you for that.

(But Sweet Lord, I’ve never seen so much candy and chips. This is not a frat house.)

Oh, but thank you for buying my favorite ice cream.

Thank you for being handy to the point that you not only "DIY" a kitchen for me, but paint it too, and draw portraits of me when I am pregnant and/or in high school (those being the only two times I’ve been willing to sit still for it), and barely complain a bit, even when I tell you your color choices for paint look like shit and I meant candy apple green, not the color of O.R. scrubs, and good god are you colorblind?  For putting up with my attitudes.

For reminding me when I feel fat that my period is in two days, so it's just that I’m just bloated and crazy.

For reminding me when I’m a total bitch that my blood sugar is low because I skipped breakfast.

For sweeping in to handle it when FrogBoy vomits or wants to eat yogurt. Because honestly I don't know which of those is more disgusting.

Thank you , thank you for all the times you’ve been ‘in the mood’ but have taken one for the team so I could sleep.

Thank you for your sense of humor; for never calling time with our son “babysitting”; for learning to be good at gardening because I suck ass at it; for holding my hand during--and calling me a bad ass after--my un-anaesthetized c-section, even though you yourself were freaking. the fuck. OUT.; and for pretty much doing the dishes and laundry ever since.

Thank you for laughing your ass off at the blog posts I read to you, and not looking at the ones I don’t.

Thank you for always answering the question, “Does this make me look fat?” correctly.

Thank you for telling me after I finished breastfeeding for good that there was No Such Thing as an imperfect set of boobs.  And for buying four heads of cabbage for me to put in my bra when I weaned. And for saying stupid things to get my mind off the pain.

Thank you for holding me while I sobbed on the kitchen floor the night before I had to send the baby to daycare the first time. And for telling me my first morning back at work that I looked great, even though I can see from the photo we took of "FrogBoy's First Day of Daycare" that my eyes were puffy, my hair looked like ass, and my cleavage was Not Appropriate for Children Under the Age of 13, much less an office environment.

Thank you for allowing me just occasionally to tease you for not being able to say “tortilla” correctly (“torteelya” is just so fucking cute I can’t stand it).

Thank you for trying to stay in shape and healthy, even though it’s hard, and for working constantly on the cigarette thing, and even when you are smoking, thank you for never doing it inside, and for wearing a different shirt so our son doesn’t smell it on you.

Thank you for always brushing your teeth and putting on deodorant. Seriously. It's amazing how many people don't do this. 

Thank you for listening intently while I describe my friends' problems, or my own work frustrations, and then being OUTRAGED right along with me, even if you have no idea what the fuck I am talking about.

Thank you for finally learning that that's all I want: the empathy. For not trying to fix it all anymore.

Thank you for being the kind of husband I can leave at home with the kid for a four day business trip and not have to leave ANY instructions on how to do anything in the house or with our child.  And for not getting angry when I give you instructions ANYWAY.

Thank you for being the strong silent type, but still, sometimes, sending me e-mails like this one from last week:

hve a slow productive day unaffected by others

states of minds and actions-

(trying to do the same today 2).

 Luv u

…that I receive at the exact moment I need them.

Thank you for waking up early sometimes and coming home just as I am waking up, with an iced latte in your hand just for me.

Thank you for being you, and for working so hard to be the man you are,

the husband any woman would love to have,

and the father most people only dream of.

If you could just, you know…less farting, smaller cereal boxes? And we’re golden.

Just kidding.

Golden already.

Happy Father’s Day, 'AquaMan.'

(Thank you for redefining the "F" word.)

I love you.

--'Momtrolfreak'

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Addickitchen

Last weekend at the grocery store, I snuck three home renovation magazines in the cart right as we were checking out. I imagined that my husband gave me "a look" and felt sheepish. Which is odd because I make my own salary (more than his, actually, since teachers are underpaid) so I should feel fine buying whatever I want, but still. (I also lie about how much shoes cost, though he could not possibly care less.) ANYWAY, when I thought I saw "the look" I said something like, "I know, I know, but..." and he had no idea what I was even talking about. I explained that I thought he was judging the magazine purchase and he chuckled and said, "I don't mind at all, you have your fun. I haven't tried to stop you from looking at those magazines, I've just tried to stop you from making ME look at those magazines."

He is so opposed to planning (my favorite pastime, BTW) that he has been sequestering himself from talking about the kitchen until the morning he starts work on it. I, of course, am much too momtrolling to let this sort of head-in-the-sand mentality go on for long, so I've been bugging him with look-at-this, what-do-you-think-about-moving-that for months now. Poor creature.

"Basically," he said, "I can build you a kitchen, or I can TALK about building you a kitchen, I don't have the time or energy to do both."

This is wise, I suppose. But I have the time and energy to do both so I'm basically going to keep henpecking him until he gives in. I think this is a solid plan. Yes?

Your Civic Doodie

Aquaman had jury duty today, just four days before the end of the school year and the beginning of our home renovation project. When I found out he was being sent to the cook county criminal court, in a pretty rough part of the city, I couldn't help but see this eleventh-hour requirement as the equivalent of the lifelong cop who has to do just one last case, and gets shot the morning of his retirement party. It had Lethal Weapon 2 written all over it.

He texted me off and on throughout the day, letting me know how things were going. It was a murder trial, slated to take approximately two weeks. A two week delay on my new kitchen. (Yes, I know, I am a horrible, selfish person; have we not established this already?) Visions of stainless steel appliances and pretty cabinets NOT GETTING INSTALLED filled my every waking thought.

Long story short (do I ever do that? Eh, I'm tired), he didn't get picked and didn't even have to come up with an excuse. He did, however, witness numerous others trying to weasel out of it.

The judge actually said to one guy who claimed financial hardship, "Young man, there are men and women dying in Afghanistan and Iraq right now. The very least you can do is spend two weeks in an air conditioned courtroom. Is that so much to ask?"

What kind of asshole would have a rebuttal to a guilt trip like that?

That is some impressive, major league guilt. I get why the judge would go the guilt route, too.

What confuses me is that I had no idea my grandmother was a judge.

IKEA: The Swedish Word for "Bullshit"

Dear IKEA,

You almost had me, you Swedish bastards. I hadn’t seen you in over two years, and I’d almost forgotten in that span of time how crazy you make me. Inexplicably drawn by your bright little androgenous stuffed animals, I forget that almost everything you make is so flimsy that it might as well be disposable.

You can’t blame me. You see, it was Mother’s Day. I woke up to breakfast in bed and a pretty necklace (from Kohl’s, not diamonds or anything, but picked out by my kid and what’s more, bought two weeks in advance, unheard of from my husband, and thus, better than diamonds), and it seemed that the world was my oyster. So I thought, why not press my luck. Skip my kid’s nap and head out to IKEA in one of two far-off suburbs outside the city. Suburbs are the only place you can exist, IKEA, because that’s where the square footage is, I get it, but seriously, a $4.99 table lamp becomes somewhat less affordable when civilized people must spend $20 in gas just to gain access to it.

Anyway, IKEA, you fucker, I should have known. I’m about to do my kitchen, though, see, and it was Mother’s Day and the sun was shining and everyone was in a good mood, and so I thought, let’s give it a shot. This is spite of The Incident, in which we spent $400 on two rugs when our son was a wee crawling thing and we needed rugs, SOFT rugs to crawl on and roll around on and—oh but wait, yes, apparently what we needed was a rug that would disintegrate, so that not only would little red rug hairs get attached to our precious baby, making him look like he was made of Velcro or a new species of mobile Brillo pad, but that the backing on the rug would turn to white powder, so that when we pulled it up to take it back we weren’t sure whether to quarantine the house in a plastic bubble á la E.T. or try to find a silver straw to snort the whole thing. So we rolled them up and took them back, it being only two months after purchase and having used a credit card, and you, IKEA, seeming like such a delightfully whimsical and bright company that we just naturally assumed you would greet us at the door, tsk-tsk at the trouble we’d gone through, and escort us to a table for three to eat lϋtfisk and lingonberries while waiting for you to retrieve a nice, intact rug for us to take home. Little did we know that your “generous return policy” meant within 30 day, even if you have a receipt. PERIOD. No, we cannot look you up in the system. No, if it’s 31 days it doesn’t count.

New Preschool Vocabulary: "Fierce"

It’s amazing/ mind-boggling/ terrifying how quickly your world view changes when you have a child. Things I was so certain of Before Child (B.C.) seem either paranoid, naïve, or hopelessly optimistic, at best, After Child (A.C.).

For instance:

Before Child: “I want a natural birth, and I have a birth plan that says I will kill you if you so much as breathe the word ‘epidural’ in my presence.”

After Child: “Meh. As long as my baby is okay, I don’t care what you do to my body.”

* 

B.C.: “Hells yeah, let’s go [skydiving/ hang gliding/ to a country with Malaria/ flying in a single-prop plane/ hotwire that piece of construction equipment and drive it onto Clark Street at 2a.m./ steal the inflatable talking Santa out of that yard and take it to the bar/ drop acid/ take a boat out in nine-foot swells/ indulge in road rage/ curse loudly all the time/ smoke cigarettes/ smoke pot/ curse loudly anytime we want/ to a show at the last minute/ to Mexico at the last minute/ to anything at the last minute/ sleep past 7:30a.m.”

A.C. “No. Just….no. We have a child to think about. We need a will.”

*

B.C. Organic food, organic clothes, organic detergent, cloth diapers (just kidding, I never did cloth diapers, that sounds waaay to much like “laundry” for me)

A.C. “Its fine, just pick it up and dust it off. Three-second rule.”

*

B.C. “My child will not be allowed to watch TV. What's more, he will not even WANT to.”

Spring Cleaning

Ha! gotcha.

I don't DO "spring cleaning."

I don't, in fact, do "cleaning." I'm...um, allergic. To....dust.

What I do is make a few comments about how it stresses me out when the house is messy, and how a stressed-out me finds it difficult to be productive while telecommuting in a mess, and then I look at my husband to see if he's taking all this in, and then I mention the whole thing about how I had his baby via c-section with no anesthesia. The next day, my house is clean.

Watch and learn ladies.

Watch.

And.

Learn.

Oh, don't feel too bad for him. I do stuff for him. I pay all the bills and buy all the presents and send all the cards and coordinate all the school-related stuff and handle ALL middle-of-the-night Frogboy requests and take the early morning shift when there is one (there always is one) and I make him laugh when he's in a bad mood and I refrain from smothering him with a pillow when he snores. That's an enormous amount of restraint. Yay me! Plus I do, ahem, other stuff he likes.

Yoooooou know what I mean.

That's right.

Camping.